
— 



^^ _— __-_ I 




Glass /"/V4 2 
Book V2- 



__ 



AN 



ELOCUTIONARY MANUAL: 



CONSISTING OP 

CHOICE SELECTIONS FROM ENGLISH AND AMERICAN 

LITERATURE, ADAPTED TO EVERY VARIETY OP 

VOCAL EXPRESSION. DESIGNED FOR THE 

HIGHER CLASSES IN SCHOOLS AND 

SEMINARIES, AND FOR PRIVATE 

AND SOCIAL READING. 

WITH AN 

INTKODUCTOKY ESSAY 



STUDY OF LITERATURE, AND ON VOCAL CULTURE AS INDISPENSABLE 
TO AN ESTHETIC APPRECIATION OP POETRY. 



BY 

HIEAM COESON, A.M., 
editor of " chaucer's legende of goode women. 



PHILADELPHIA: 

CHAELES D.ESILVBB, 

1229 Chestnut Street. 
1865. 



192 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by 

CHARLES DESILVER, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Eastern 
District of Pennsylvania. 



«*$ 



x* 



J. FAOAX k SON, f? *V« 

, 8TEREOTYPERS, PHILAD'A. ^Jfi^** 

^ vn JJR 



PRINTED BY CRI3SY k MARKLEY. 



TO MY PUPILS 



THIS BOOK 



IS DEDICATED. 



H. C. 



(iii) 



CONTENTS 



PAGE. 

On the Study of Literature and on Vocal Culture 

Hiram Corson. 15 

"What is Literature? Thomas Be Quincey. 49 

On the refining and elevating influence of Poetry 

William Ellery Channing. 57 

The Church of Brou Matthew Arnold. 61 

Description of a Country Gentleman of the Seventeenth 

Century Thomas Babington Macaulay. 69 

A Rill from the Town Pump Nathaniel Hawthorne. 73 

The Wreck of the Hesperus.. ..Henry Wadsioorth Longfellow. 78 

Squire Bull and his son Jonathan James Kirke Paulding. 82 

The Alpine Sheep Mrs. Maria White Lowell. 86 

Spring N. P. Willis. 88 

Best method of Reading Henry Reed. 89 

A literary Criticism Joseph Dennie. 91 

The height of the Ridiculous Oliver Wendell Holmes. 100 

Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire 

Edward Gibbon. 101 

Gibbon's First Love Edward Gibbon. 104 

The Blind Preacher William Wirt. 107 

The Sea and the Mountains ....Oliver Wendell Holmes. 112 

My Kate Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 114 

Literature and Learning in the reign of Charles II 

Thomas Babington Macaulay. 116 

The Human Voice Oliver Wendell Holmes. 126 

1* (v) 



vi CONTENTS. 

PAGE. 

Extracts from "Aurora Leigh"... Elizabeth B. Browning. 131-134 

English Landscape 131 

Life 132 

The Soul's intimations of Immortality L33 

London L34 

London Heinrich Heine. 136 

The Song of Deborah and Barak Book of Judges. 137 

Incident at Bruges William Wordsworth. 140 

Monk Felix Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. 142 

The tendency of nations to over-estimate the Past, and de- 
preciate the Present Thomas Babington Macavlay. 147 

Scorn not the Sonnet. % William Wordsworth. 149 

The World is too much with us William Wordsworth. 150 

Milton William Wordsworth. 151 

Silence Thomas Hood. 15 1 

Fancy in Nubibus ; or, the Poet in the Clouds 

Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 152 
God's power and providence illustrated in the Animal King- 
dom Book of Job. 1 ">'.j 

Belshazzar's Feast Book of Daniel. L55 

Rural Life in Sweden Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. loO 

Passages from the Marble Fann. ...Nathaniel Hawthorne. 108-179 

The Faun of Praxiteles 1G8 

The Dying Gladiator 171 

Description of a Fountain 172 

Needle-work 173 

The Italian Climate 174 

On the appreciation of a Picture 175 

Description of Saint Peter's 175 

Guido's Beatrice 177 

Rome 179 

Songs and Lyrics from " The Princess". .Alfred Tennyson. 181-185 

Reconciliation over a Child's Grave 181 

Cradle Song ' 182 



CONTENTS. vii 

PAGE. 

Bugle Song '. 182 

The Days that are no more 183 

The Dead "Warrior ! 184 

"Ask me no more" 185 

The Saxon and Latin elements of the English language ; — 

the peculiar province of each in poetic diction 

Thomas De Quincey. 186 
Visit of the Wise Men to the infant Saviour, and the Flight 

into Egypt Gospel of St. Matthew. 189 

Parable of the Prodigal Son Gospel of St. Luke. 192 

Christ and the Woman of Samaria Gospel of St. John. 194 

Lady Clara Vere de Vere Alfred Tennyson. 197 

The Lord of Burleigh Alfred Tennyson. 200 

Parallel between the Portraits of Byron and Shelley 

George Gilfillan. 204 
Intellectual qualities of Milton.... William Ellery Channing. 205 

The Skeleton in Armour Henry Wadsivorth Longfellow. 208 

Don Quixote Henry Giles. 215 

Godiva.. 7. Leigh Hunt. 217 

Godiva Alfred Tennyson. 223 

Youth and Age • Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 226 

Love; or, Genevieve Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 228 

The Palimpsest Thomas De Quincey. 232 

Ode to a Nightingale John Keats. 240 

To a Lady with a Guitar Percy Bysshe Shelley. 243 

" He giveth his beloved Sleej) ,, ...Elizabet7i Barrett Browning. 247 

Covrper's Grave Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 249 

"Break, Break, Break" Alfred Tennyson. 252 

The Dream of Eugene Aram Thomas Hood. 253 

The Portraits of Shakspeare and Goethe David Masson. 262 

The Humble Bee Ralph Waldo Emerson. 268 

The Execution. A sporting anecdote R. Harris Barham. 271 

A Dead Rose Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 278 



vm CONTENTS. 

PAGE. 

Garden Fancies Robert Browning. 279 

Chaucer Hiram Corson. 281 

" Tribulation" — the Etymology of the "Word 

Richard Chenevix Trench. 289 

June James Russell Lowell. 292 

The Voiceless Oliver Wendell Holmes. 29G 

The Chambered Nautilus Oliver Wendell Holmes. 297 

The Panther Leigh limit. 299 

Description of a Spanish Bull-fight Lord Byron. 302 

The Haven Edgar Allan !'»<•. 305 

The Bells Edgar Allan Foe. 313 

Ulalume Edgar Allan I'oc. 317 

To a Mountain Daisy, on turning one down with the Plough 

in April, 178G Robert Burns, 321 

Sublimity of the Prophet Isaiah Bishop Robert Lowth. 323 

The Three Ladies of Sorrow Thomas J)r Quincey. :V27 

Sir Galahad ilfred Tennyson. 332 

Intimations of Immortality from recollections of early child- 
hood William Wordsworth. 335 

Boswell's Life of Johnson ; — how " Histories" are written.... 

Thomas Carlyle. 343 

Morte D' Arthur Alfred Tennyson. 351 

Ode to the West Wind Percy Bysshe Shelley. 368 

The Beauty of the Outer World a reflex of a pure and joyous 

soul Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 372 

Extract from " Christabel" Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 373 

Passages from " The Paradise Lost" John Milton. 381-394 

Satan recovers from his downfall and arouses his le- 
gions who lie entranced on the burning lake 381 

Description of Satan 383 

Pandemonium and its architect 383 

Satan on the wing for Earth, and his meeting with 

Sin and Death at Hell gates 386 

The expulsion of the rebel angels from Heaven 389 



CONTENTS. IX 

PAGE. 

from Shakspeare. 394-432 

Shylock, the Jew, loans Bassanio three thousand ducats 
on the security of a pound of Antonio's flesh 394 

Othello, the Moor, accused by Brabantio of having won 
his daughter Desdemona by love-potions and witchcraft, 
makes his defence before the Duke and Senators of 
Venice, and tells the story of his courtship 402 

Hamlet at his Uncle's Court. — Horatio imparts to him 
the appearance of his father's ghost 411 

Interview between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth after the 
murder of King Duncan 421 

Ulysses' advice to Achilles 424 



INDEX OF AUTHORS. 



PAGE. 

Arnold, Matthew 61 

Barham, R. Harris 271 

Book of Daniel 155 

Book of Job 153 

Book of Judges 137 

Browning, Elizabeth B. ... 114, 131, 132, 133, 134, 247, 249, 278 

Browning, Robert 279 

Burns, Robert 321 

Byron, Lord 302 

Carlyle, Thomas 343 

Channing, William Ellery 57,205 

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 152, 226, 228, 372 

Corson, Hiram 15, 281 

Dennie, Joseph 91 

De Quincey, Thomas 49, 186, 232, 327 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo 268 

Gibbon, Edward 101, 104 

Giles, Henry 215 

Gilfillan, George 204 

Gospel of St. John 194 

Gospel of St, Luke 192 

Gospel of St. Matthew 189 

HaAvthorne, Nathaniel 168, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 177, 179 

Heine, Heinrich 136 

Holmes, Oliver Wendell 100, 112, 126, 296, 297 

(xi) 



Xil INDEX OF A UTEORS. 

PAGE. 

Hood, Thomas 151, 253 

Hunt, Leigh 217, 299 

Ingoldsby, Thomas 271 

Keats, John 240 

Leland, Charles G 13G 

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth 78, 142, 159, 208 

Lowell, James Russell .• 292 

Lowell, Mrs. Maria White 8G 

Lowth, Robert 323 

Macaulay, Thomas Babington 69, 11G, 147 

Masson, David 2G2 

Milton, John 381-394 

Paulding, James Kirke 82 

Poe, Edgar Allan 305, 313, 317 

Reed, Henry 89 

Shakspeare, William 394-432 

Shelley, Percy Bysshe 243, 368 

Tennyson, Alfred 181, 185, 197, 200, 223, 252, 332, 351 

Trench, Richard Chenevix 289 

Willis, Nathaniel Parker 88 

Wirt, William 107 

Wordsworth, William 140, 149, 150, 151, 335 



INTRODUCTORY ESSAY 

ON THE 

STUDY OF LITERATURE, AND ON VOCAL CULTURE 

AS INDISPENSABLE TO AN ESTHETIC 

APPRECIATION OF POETRY. 



BY HIRAM CORSON, A. M, 



(xiii) 



/' 



SO THEY READ L\ THE BOOK IN THE LAW OF GOD 
DISTINCTLY, AND GAVE THE SENSE, AND CAUSED THEM 
TO UNDERSTAND THE READING. 

Neiiemiaii, Chap. VIII., v. 8. 



(»v) 






PART I. 



ON THE STUDY OF LITEEATUEE. 

fITEE AEY study, in its higher form, aims to treat 
a literature as a whole, and endeavours to trace 
the several and successive stages of its development, 
to discover the various causes, political, social, edu- 
cational, religious, to which the productions of any 
period owe their peculiarities. Such an aim also em- 
braces a comparison of the genius and productions of 
authors of the same period and of different periods. 
It is also within its scope to trace the development of 
ideas relative to literary art, and the different views 
held at different periods as to the legitimate functions 
of the several departments of Literature. There is no 
study more interesting than this, treating, as it does, 
of the infinite phases and attitudes which the human 
mind presents under different circumstances, and yet 
remaining in all places and in all times, essentially the 
same. But it is a difficult and ambitious task, even 
when undertaken by men of the widest and ripest 

(15) 



16 ON THE STUDY OF LITERATURE. 

knowledge, the deepest imaginative insight, and the 
subtlest analytical power. The present century has 
produced perhaps not more than two men capable of 
writing a history of the development of English 
Literature ; I allude to. Thomas De Quincey and Samuel 
Taylor Coleridge. That they possessed the requisite 
qualifications no one who is intimately acquainted 
with their writings can deny; and from their writings 
it is also evident that their powers pointed in this 
direction as the one most favourable to their fullest 
and most genial exercise. 

A less ambitious aim in literary study, is the study 
of individual productions as distinct works of art, 
without any special regard to their relative value and 
historical significance. To take a poem, for instance, 
and discover the secret of its aesthetic power, and the 
various elements of this power, is something within 
the reach of any one of ordinary emotional appre- 
ciation and analytical skill. Such a study requires 
for its successful prosecution no very extensive know- 
ledge of general literature, and no great powers of 
analysis and synthesis, and is, of course, the indispen- 
sable preparation for the higher study I have men- 
tioned. But true to a principle which seems to un- 
derlie our present systems of rapid education, — namely, 
to rush, at once, "in medias res" — the History of Eng- 
lish Literature is often studied in our Institutions of 
learning, before there is any, not even the most super- 
ficial, acquaintance with individual productions. If 



ON THE STTDY OF LITERATURE, 17 

they are studied at all, they are usually studied in 
fragments, in the shape of "Beautiful Extracts," or 
"Moral Passages," and the advantage derived from the 
study of organisms is thus entirely forfeited. The 
one mode is as inferior to the other, as the study of 
bits of china would be, to contemplating the beautiful 
and graceful vase of which they once formed parts. 
In the study of the mere material, we lose sight of the 
beautiful form into which the artist has moulded it. 
It is by the form which he has given to his manifold 
material, and which is the basis of all high aesthetic 
impression, that he is to be estimated. What has he 
made or moulded out of his material ? is the question to 
be asked. How has he organized it, and with what 
results ? With what success has he brought all details 
under the pervading, vitalizing influence of a dominant 
idea, causing them to impart to his work a richness and 
an intense vitality ? Has he wisely rejected everything 
superfluous, or are there excrescences which contribute 
nothing to the general moral impression? Is his 
rhetoric in the web of his thought, or is it only sewed 
on, like gold lace on a coat? Are his thoughts 
evolved with a skilful and graceful transition from 
one to the other ? or are they abrupt, insulated, ca- 
pricious, with little or no law of succession? !N"o num- 
ber of brilliant passages will compensate for a de- 
ficiency in the organic unity and vitality of a work. 
The elements are nothing without "the atmosphere 
that moulds, and the dynamic forces that combine." 
2* 



18 ON THE STUDY OF LITERATURE. 

There is no objection, however, to storing the 
memory with the beautiful passages of concentrated 
energy with which the higher poetry in the contriv- 
ing spirit of its eloquence, abounds. The more of 
such passages every one has at his command, the 
better. No means, however superficial, for increasing 
our familiarity with the ideal world of Poetry, should 
be discouraged. Converse with Poetry should not be 
regarded merely as an elegant and refined pastime, — 
but as an essential to our spiritual life, as bread is to 
our physical life. Without its kindly influence, life 
becomes sordid, selfish, and commonplace. Daily in- 
tercourse with the great Masters of Song is also the 
best safeguard against the temptations which beset us 
in the world of current literature. The most popular 
works the press sends forth are those which gratify an 
appetite for the surprising and the thrilling. " It is 
of the greatest importance," says John Euskin, " not 
only for Art's sake, but for all kinds of sake, in these 
days of book-deluge, to keep out of the salt-swamps 
of literature, and live on a little rocky island of your 
own, with a spring and a lake in it pure and good." 

Let Poetry, then, be studied and communed with in 
every possible way. It will do nobody any harm. 
But in a system of mental and aesthetic culture, the 
leading design should be, the study of poems and 
other literary art-products, as organisms, which are to 
be comprehended, not in their parts only, but in their 
totality. The more intense a man's intellectual and 



ON THE STUDY OF LITERATURE. 19 

emotional life becomes, the more he demands effects 
produced b j the organization of manifold elements — ■ 
elements fused by the alchemy of the imagination into 
a new and living whole, whose synthesis calls forth 
that harmonious energizing of the soul, which consti- 
tutes its highest life and delight. 

But let it not be supposed that the pleasure derived 
from the productions of Poetry or of any other of the 
fine arts, is due to a conscious energizing to compre- 
hend them. The pleasure derived from a work of the 
imagination is in proportion to the degree of uncon- 
sciousness with which all its appeals are responded to. 
Works which strictly belong to Literature, — that is, 
works which speak to the understanding through the 
emotions, — should not be read, of course, as those 
which address the insulated understanding. We must 
come to the reading of the former, for the first time, 
in the least self-conscious state possible ; we must 
avoid analysis as much as we can, and place ourselves 
passively under the influence of our author. 

" We get no good," 

says Mrs. Browning, in her " Aurora Leigh," 

" By being ungenerous, even to a book, 
And calculating profits ... so much help 
By so much reading. It is rather when 
We gloriously forget ourselves, and plunge 
Soul-fjrward, headlong, into a book's profound, 
Impassioned for its beauty and salt of truth — 
'Tis then Tve get the right good from a book." 



20 ON THE STUDY OF L 1 T i: /.' .1 T V R K . 

The sensibilities are the peculiar domain of the 
Fine Arts, and by a transcendent preeminence of the 
greatest of the Fine Arts — Poetry ; and if, by a pre- 
mature analysis, the sensibilities are not allowed their 
requisite play, the leading purpose of a work of the 
Imagination is defeated. We should not attempt an- 
alysis until we bave reoeived an emotional impression 
from the whole; in some eases, many emotional im- 
pressions, accordiiii'- bo the extent of a work, and the 
degree of its sensuousness. We may then seek to 
discover the various elements of this impression, and 
by a more conscious and intimate knowledge of the 
respective functions of these elements, attain to a 
higher impression from the whole. This higher im- 
pression will lead to a still more minute analysis by 
which we will discover subtler elements of effect 
which the first analysis did not reveal. This more 
minute analysis will be followed by a still higher im- 
pression from the whole ; and thus the process will 
continue of an alternation of general impression and 
analysis until we have grown up to the work, as it 
were : we fully respond to the emotional appeal made 
by the artist ; we grasp his work it its entireness ; that 
which was at first consciously and with effort, 
received, reaches in time higher and subtler organs 
of discernment, where is breathed the purer air of 
unconsciousness and spontaneity. > 

Take, for example, the " Locksley Hall " of Tenny- 
son. On the first reading of this "grand hymn of 



ON THE STUDY OF LITERATURE. 21 

human progress," the magnificent swell of the rhythm, 
and the richness of the melody, will be likely to pro- 
duce the most decided impression. In other words, 
the first impression will be, what it should be to a 
great extent in every true poem, a sensuous one — ac- 
companied, of course, by a general understanding of 
the poem. With this impression, we may be content 
for a number of readings, and not be disposed to look 
further into the poem, especially if we happen to take 
it up in a passive mood. At another time, when we 
are more disposed to be analytical, we may fix our 
attention upon the picturesqueness and passion of the 
language, the imagery, the lights and shades of the 
thoughts, and the suggestiveness of the vowel sounds, 
for in Poetry, words ara not merely representatives of 
ideas, but are ivied over with emotional associations. 
The syntactical construction, eveu, will claim some 
attention, for this latter feature presents a number of 
difficulties in "Locksley Hall." 

When the results of all these observations and the 
several impressions derived therefrom, shall have 
been absorbed in the general impression, we will be 
disposed to penetrate still further — we will endeavour 
to supply all the connecting links of the thought and 
feeling — and in the poem in question they are re- 
markably subtle — to discover how the poet, in the^ 
intensity of his inspiration, passed from one thought 
or one feeling to another thought or another feeling, 
A great poet, giving expression to a subtle and com- 



22 ON THE STUDY OF LITERATURE. 

plex sentiment, must necessarily be obscure to the 
ordinary reader, in whom such sentiment exists only 
potentially, and with its elements uncombined. It is 
not in the simple elements that one individual mind 
differs from another, but in their degree, and in the 
nature of their combination. The emotions which the 
great poet, or painter, or musician, experiences, are 
more complex than those experienced by men in gene- 
ral ; and when they are expressed in words, in marble, 
in colours, or in sounds, it requires at first, an effort, 
and frequently, a long-continued effort, to go over the 
process of their combination, and clearly to apprehend 
the leading sentiment which was the controlling prin- 
ciple of the association 

Imagination does not differ essentially from ordinary 
thinking — it follows the same laws, but those laws 
are more actively and harmoniously in force. It is 
ordinary thinking intensified. Imagination, to be sure, 
is always impassioned, which ordinary thinking is not; 
but that is the natural consequence of its intensity • 
the depths of the whole nature are stirred by it. 

Every true poem is a piece of articulate music, 
which an ordinary Imagination must long practice 
upon before it can play it with a sufficient degree of 
spontaneousness and unconsciousness, to derive from 
it all the pleasure it is capable of imparting. The 
same process goes on in the contemplation of a picture 
or a statue — at first view the impression it produces 
rnay be quite an indifferent one ; but repeated impres- 



ON THE STUDY OF LITERATURE. 23 

sions, each deepened by an analysis of previous ones, 
will finally fuse, if the work possesses a consistent, con- 
gruous unity, into one compound and harmonious 
feeling. As in the case of the poem, we grow up to 
the work. "We grasp it as a whole and spontaneously. 
We are fully informed in regard to the work. Our 
feelings have been gradually tuned to respond to its 
emotional appeal. 

Art owes its power chiefly to the magic garment 
of form, and not to what it explicitly teaches. The 
principle which underlies true art, and which the 
artist must consciously or unconsciously recognize, is 
that which Mrs. Browning has so happily expressed : 

"paint a body well, 
You paint a soul by implication, like 
The grand first Master." 

Art educates, but i\ does not aim directly to instruct 
or indoctrinate. Its great function is to keep alive 
man's sensibilities and instincts, and thus to fit him 
for the perception of high spiritual truths. It is thus 
that Poetry and all the Fine Arts work moral results. 
The true Artist is an implicit, not an explicit teacher 
and moralist. 

"The only real instructor of the human race," says 
Orestes Brownson, "is the artist; and it^is as artists, 
as men wrought up to the intensest life, and therefore 
acting from the full force of their being, that all the 
great and universally admitted philosophers have been 
able to quicken the race and set it forward to higher 



24 ON THE S T UD Y F L I TE 11 A T UK E , 

and more comprehensive life. No man is really a 
philosopher till warmed up into the artist. Here is 
the sacredness of art, and the explanation of the fact, 
that the highest truths are always uttered by men 
when under the influence of the loftiest and c 
genuine Imagination." 

There is a final stage at which we arrive in the 
study of a great poem, though modern criticism is too 
much inclined to make it the introductory one. When 
we are fully informed in regard to a work of the Ima- 
gination, in the way that has been pointed out, and in 
the art-sense of the word, we are disposed to go fur- 
ther — to seek in the artist's forms an undercurrent of 
meaning, to make them typical of ideas which do not 
essentially and absolutely belong to them. Into what- 
ever recommends itself by the beauty of its form, the 
Imagination loves to infuse its own conceptions — to 
make it the casket of its own jewels, thus enriching 
it beyond its own intrinsic value. But we must not 
forget that although the Imagination may make this 
use of what it lovingly embraces by reason of its 
beauty of form, this beauty of form is an end to itself, 
and for itself was created by the artist, if he wrought 
it in a true artist spirit. All works of genius are 
richly suggestive, and are characterized by a flexi- 
bility of significance which often leads critics of a 
philosophic turn of mind to attribute to their authors 
definite purposes which they perhaps never dreamt 
of. The Grerman critics, (though the best in the world, 



ON THE STUDY OF LITERATURE. 25 

certainly far superior to the English and French,) from 
a disposition to see further into a millstone than the 
nature of a millstone will allow, run sometimes into 
ridiculous extremes in regard to what they are so fond 
of designating the Idea of a work. To be assured of 
this fact, we have but to read the Shakspearean criti- 
cisms of Dr. Ulrici, in many respects marked by great 
ability, and the numberless criticisms which have 
appeared on Goethe's Wilhelm Meister and Faust. 
Goethe seems to have understood this tendency of his 
countrymen to dig for mysteries, and to have written 
the Second Part of Faust to give them plenty to do in 
that line for some generations. Certainly the interest 
which attaches to the Second Part of Faust is rather a 
philosophical than an art interest. It is in the inter- 
preting of its symbolism that the critics are chiefly 
interested, and not in the wealth of its poetic life, for 
this has been justly denied the Second Part of Faust, 
unsurpassed as is the First Part as a production of the 
poetic faculty. 

The legitimate interest which attaches to Art's 
forms, is an emotional interest, and is, in consequence, 
immeasurably higher in its nature than any merely 
intellectual interest could possibly be. 

"One impulse from a vernal wood 
May teach us more of man, 
Of moral evil and of good, 
Than all the sages can." 

Herein consist the sacredness and loftiness of Art, 

that its grand function is to bring into play and pre- 

3 



26 ON THE STUDY OF LITERATURE. 

serve in an healthful activity, the emotional side of 
our nature. Man is greater as an emotional than as 
an intellectual being. The sensibilities are the soil in 
which all his moral qualities have root and nourish. 
But in a high state of civilization where the efforts 
requisite to procure the necessaries and luxuries of 
life, tend to sharpen men's wits at the expense of their 
sensibilities, special means are necessary to keep the 
latter alive, and this is done most effectually by the 
Fine Arts — by Music, by the Drama, by Painting, and 
more especially, by Poetry and other forms of Litera- 
ture. All these are, or should be, the handmaids of 
Eeligion. 

The highest, noblest, and most attractive order of 
manhood, is that wherein a just equilibrium is pre- 
served between the intellect and the emotions. George 
Sand has well remarked, that for civilization to attain 
its highest perfection, man must become more womanly, 
and woman more manly. Tennyson has expressed 
the same idea in "The Princess." Speaking of the 
mutual relations of the sexes, the Prince is made to 
say: — 

" in the long years liker must they grow ; 



The man be more of woman, she of man ; 
He gain in sweetness and in moral height, 
Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world; 
She mental breadth, nor fail in childward care, 
Nor lose the childlike in the larger mind/ - ' 

All the great seers of the race have realized to an 
extent this condition — have been a well -poised duality 



ON THE STUDY OF LITERATURE. 27 

of the highest manhood and the highest womanhood. 
To a profound and refined sensibility to the influences 
of nature and of human life, they have united the 
highest discursive and analytical power. The sensi- 
bilities are the basis of the intuitional and the pro- 
phetic; through them man feels the truth before he 
knows it ; and a condition of his knowing it, that is, 
defining it to his intellect, is, that he possess the requi- 
site power to analyze the material furnished by his 
emotional nature. Emotion reaps the spiritual har- 
vest, intellect gathers it into sheaves, threshes it, 
winnows the grain from the chaff, and makes it into 
nourishing bread. If the intellect fail to perform its 
part of the labour, the swarth rots in the field, and the 
intellect pays the penalty of its inaction, by famine, 
and a life-in-death listlessness. It has, also, to lay up 
provisions, not only for the summer, but for the winter. 
Though emotion may be an active workman, as long 
as it serves the intellect, yet, unless it be well cared 
for, it grows torpid in the cold weather, and the 
intellect must depend wholly upon the acquisitions of 
the spring and summer's work ; and if these have not 
been sufficiently extensive, it too must experience 
winter's torpifying colds. Upon the life of the one, 
depends the life of the other. Neither can healthfully 
and vigourously exist by itself. 

To preserve a proper equilibrium between the in- 
tellect and the sensibilities, is, perhaps, in the present 
organization of society, impossible. The circumstances 



28 ON THE STUDY OF LITERATURE. 

which beset the life of every one, tend to a one-sided- 
ness of development. In fact, without a certain degree 
of one-sidedness in the individual, the various depart- 
ments of human thought and learning would make 
but little progress. The absolute good of the indivi- 
dual, it seems, must be sacrificed to the good of society; 
at any rate, until political wisdom shall have de\ -i 
means for reconciling the one with the other. But, in 
an abstract view, an emotional one-sidedaesa is prefer- 
able to an intellectual one-sidedness. A man may have 
scaled the loftiest heights of metaphysics ; he may have 
attained to the highest generalizations which are within 
the possibilities of the human intellect ; he may have 
weighed the stars, and measured their appalling dis- 
tances ; he may have descended into the bowels of the 
mountain, and found written there, in hieroglyphics 
of unmistakable meaning, the vast ages our planet has 
been dipping forward under sunshine and starry light ; 
he may have learned the names and habits, the genera 
and species, of all the beasts of the field, and the fowls 
of the air, and of the creatures that inhabit the mighty 
deep ; he may, by a subtle chemistry, have resolved 
all matter into its primitive elements ; he may have 
seized the lightning and forced it to carry his messages, 
in the twinkling of an eye, to the most distant corners 
of the earth ; but, if the soft blue sky did never melt 
into his heart ; if he never felt the witchery of the soft 
blue sky ; if, like Wordsworth's Peter Bell, 



ON THE STUDY OF LITERATURE. 29 

"A primrose by a river's brim 
A yellow primrose be to him, 
And it be nothing more ;" 

if lie has never been moved by the mysteries of the 
springtime, or dreamed amid the leafy pomps of sum- 
mer ; if his soul has never been softened, and filled 
with a luxurious sadness, by the departing glories and 
dreamy melancholy of the autumn woods ; if he has 
never experienced a wild and strange delight in the 
desolation and the howling blasts of winter; if he be 
a stranger to the divine and rapturous joys of which, 
through music, faint and sly glimpses are sometimes 
caught ; if he has never dreamed over some landscape, 
on the canvas of a great master, bathed in 

"A light that never was on sea or land," 

or stood rapt before a figure of ideal loveliness ; if 
his pulse has never been quickened, and his heart 
made to beat proudly by the radiant smiles and affec- 
tionate greetings of a wife and children, after a day's 
rude commerce with the world ; if, though ruthlessly 
deprived by Death of every earthly tie, he has not 
felt, that 

" "Pis better to have loved and lost 
Than never to have loved at all," — 

he is, in spite of all his vast intellectual conquests, a 

very one-sided creature, and has but fed on husks, 

while many a poor servant in his father's house has 

had bread, enough and to spare. 

But reverse the picture. Suppose him to be ac- 
3* 



30 ON THE STUDY OF LITERATURE. 

quainted with all these emotional experiences, but to 
be totally ignorant of the great conquests and triumphs 
of the intellect ; in the latter case, we would not con- 
sider him as one-sided as in the former ; we would be 
disposed to regard him, not as one who had had but a 
beggarly heritage, but as one of the highly favoured 
of the children of men. 

It was to express his profound conviction of this 
truth, that William Wordsworth wrote the most beau- 
tiful sonnet in our Literature : 

The world is too much with us ; late and soon, 

Getting and spending we lay waste our powers ; 

Little we see in nature that is ours ; 
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon ! 
This 6ea that bares her bosom to the moon, 

The winds that will be howling at all hours, 

And are up-gather'd now like sleeping flowers ; 
For this, for every thing, we are out of tune ; 

It moves us not. Great God ! Pd rather be 
A pagan suckled in a creed outworn ; 

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, 
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn ; 

Have eight of Proteus rising from the sea, 
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. 



PART II 



VOCAL CULTUKE. 

1ST indispensable condition of an aesthetic appre- 
ciation of high poetry, is, that it receive an 
adequate vocal expression. Without a high vocal 
culture, — without the highest vocal culture, — the 
study of poetry must be more or less imperfect. To 
say nothing of other elements of poetry which demand 
a vocal expression, for their proper appreciation, the 
musical element, which constitutes in the higher poe- 
try so large a portion of the sentiment, and imparts 
that indefiniteness which attaches to all the produc- 
tions of the Imagination, can alone be fully appreciated 
when adequately expressed by the voice. When I 
speak of the musical element of poetry, I mean, of 
course, all the subtle effects produced by the rhythm, 
by the variation of successive vowel sounds, by the 
rhyme, by the varied length of the lines, by pauses, 
by the acceleration and retardation of the verse, by 
the distribution of emphasis, and many other elements 

(31) 



32 VOCAL CULTURE. 

of effect, some of which are unrecognizable and beyond 
the reach of analysis. Without the aid of the voice, 
all the charms and subtle able from th 

elements, must be lost in a great measure to the ma- 
jority of silent readers. 

There are, no doubt, readers of poetry, whose im- 
agination of its musical suggestiveness sufficiently 
compensates for the absence of a vocal expression. 
But these must constitute a very limited class. With 
the great majority, much of the aroma of poetry must 
evaporate in silenl r< 

Mrs.Siddonsissaid to have studied her greatest parts 
silently. This, we must Buppose, she was enabled to do 
through her imagination of their elocution, and she 
possessed by nature, such a remarkable power over the 
organs of speech that she could always rely upon them 
in giving utterance on the stage, to her nicest concep- 
tions. Dr. Rush speaks of her voice as "a mirror for 
every trait of natural expression, in which one might 
recognize his deep, unuttered sympathy, and love the 
flattering picture as his own. All that is smooth," 
he adds, "and flexible, and various in intonation, all 
that is impressive in force, and in long-drawn time, 
all that is apt upon the countenance, and consonant 
in gesture, gave their united energy, gracefulness, 
grandeur, and truth, to this one great model of Ideal 
Elocution. Hers was that height of excellence, which, 
defying mimicry, can be made imaginable only by 
being equaled. 



VOCAL CULTURE. 33 

" Such was my enthusiastic opinion, before a scrutiny 
into speech had developed a boundless scheme of 
criticism and instruction ; which, in admitting that 
nature may hold within her laws, the unrevealed power 
of producing occasional instances of rare accomplish- 
ment of voice ; yet assures us, that nothing but the 
influence of some system of principles, founded on a 
knowledge of those laws, can ever produce multipled 
examples of excellence, or give to any one the perfec- 
tion of art. There is a pervading energy in Observa- 
tive Science which searches, discovers, gathers-together 
co-arranges, still amplifies and completes ; and which 
all the means of untrained effort can never reach." * 

Some of the greatest poets, who exhibit in their 
poetry the nicest sense of all the elements of musical 
expressiveness, are known to have been very imper- 
fect, monotonous readers. Coleridge is an example. 
"Amongst Coleridge's accomplishments," says De 
Quincey, alluding, in his "Literary Eeminiscences," 
to Coleridge's lectures on Poetry and the Fine Arts, 
at the Eoyal Institution, " good reading was not one ; 
he had neither voice, nor management of voice." And 
yet, how wonderfully has he incarnated his sentiment 
in his versification ! — " Of the soul, the body form 
doth take." Witness his Christabel, especially the 
First Part, his Ancient Mariner, his Kubla Khan, his 
Genevieve, his Youth and Age, and numerous other 
of his poems. 

* " The Philosophy of the Human Voice, 5th edition, p. 396. 



34 VOCAL CULTURE. 

Byron's reading, too, according to Medwin, was a 
sing-song ; and the present Laureate of England, the 
musical effects of whose poetry in suggesting subtlety 
of feeling, have never been surpassed, is said to read 
like a school-boy. Edgar Poe is represented to have 
been a most monotonous, uninteresting reader, and 
yet he composed one of the most melodious poems in 
our Literature. I allude to his Ulalumc, which is as 
beautifully, strangely, and significantly modulated as 
it is possible for language to be. 

But it would be absurd to suppose that these poets 
did not appreciate their own melodies when they pro- 
duced them ; — that they were mere passive iEolian 
harps, giving forth sounds to which they themselves 
were deaf. They no doubt had a profounder sense of 
them as conductors of feeling, than the most perfect 
reader would be able to express. This being the case, 
why did their reading so belie their conceptions ? The 
answer is easily given, and it affords the best argu- 
ment against the sticklers for what is called natural 
reading, namely, that the fullest appreciation of a poem, 
and the most searching sense of all its subtlest ele- 
ments of effect, are totally inadequate to a proper 
vocal expression of it, where the organs of speech are 
not in perfect obedience to the will and the feelings. 
This obedience can only be secured by long and care- 
ful culture. The conscious observance of principles 
and rules, must become unconscious and spontaneous. 
A poet's organs of speech are as likely to be rigid 



VOCAL CULTURE. 35 

and unmanagable as those of a boor, and in such case, 
no degree of imagination and feeling will render them 
flexible without special culture. 

We often hear the advice given, and it frequently 
constitutes about all that some professors of the art 
have to impart on the subject, " Enter into the spirit 
of what you read, read naturally, and you will read 
well." 

This constitutes the sum and substance of what the 
learned Bishop Whately teaches on the subject in his 
"Elements of Ehetoric." In Part TV., Chap. II., § 2, 
of this work, he says : " Nature, or custom, which is a 
second nature, suggests spontaneously the different 
modes of giving expression to different thoughts, feel- 
ings, and designs, which are present to the mind of 
any one who, without study, is speaking in earnest his 
own sentiments. Then, if this be the case, why not 
leave nature to do her own work?" This question 
may perhaps be satisfactorily answered by asking 
another : If reason is a natural gift of man, and no 
one will deny that it is, why did the learned Arch- 
bishop of Dublin take the trouble to write such a 
good book as he did on the science and art of reason- 
ing ? Why did he not leave nature to do her own 
work ? The gift of reason can hardly be more per- 
verted than the gift of speech, and if earnestness is 
all that is required to give an unrestrained play to the 
functions of the latter, why should it not be equally 
available in respect to those of the former ? But every 



36 VOCAL CULTURE. 

one's experience will tell him that earnest reasoning is 
not necessarily sound reasoning — it often shoots very 
far from the mark. 

"Impress but the mind," the Archbishop goes on to 
say, " fully with the sentiments, &c. to be uttered ; 
withdraw the attention from the sound, and fix it on 
the sense; and nature, or habit, will spontaneously 
suggest the proper Delivery." 

Such instruction as this is not unlike that which 
Hamlet gives to Guildenstern for playing upon the 
flute, and would be about as efficacious : 

Hamlet. Will you play upon this pipe ? 

Guildenstern. My lord, I cannot. 

Hamlet. I pray you. 

Guildenstern. Believe me, I cannot. 

Hamlet. I do beseech you. 

Guildenstern. I know no touch of it, my lord. 

Hamlet. 'Tis as easy as lying : govern these ventages 
with your finger and thumb, give it breath with your 
mouth, and it will discourse most eloquent music. 
Look you, these are the stops. 

Guildenstern. But these cannot I command to any 
utterance of harmony : / have not the skill. 

Walking, it will be admitted, is as natural a func- 
tion as talking and reasoning, and much more easily 
performed. When we study the wonderful mechanism 
of the human body, the inference is readily drawn 
that Nature designed that all our movements should 
be in the highest degree graceful. But so far is this 



VOCAL CULTURE. 37 

from being the case, that scarcely one person in a 
thousand knows how to walk with any degree of 
grace. In our movements, as in the exercise of our 
vocal and reasoning powers, we hate all gone astray, 
and it is only by special training, based upon princi- 
ples deduced from careful observation, that we can 
realize Nature's purposes. Science and art do not 
attempt anything different from these purposes, but 
only aim to fulfil them more effectually. 

Milton says of Eve, when fresh from the hands of 
her Creator, 

" Grace was in all her steps, heaven in her eye, 
In every gesture, dignity and love.' 7 

But her sons and daughters have long lost the primae- 
val grace and dignity. They exist only in marble 
and on canvas. 

Now every one will be ready to admit that the ad- 
vice given to one who walks clumsily and awkwardly, 
to enter into the spirit of the act, to be in earnest, and 
to walk naturally, would be very inadequate to the 
case. A more availing and rational advice would be — 
develop all the functions of the body in a way that 
they will be exercised harmoniously and without 
restraint; but not till then can graceful movements 
and attitudes be expected. Education can create no- 
thing. It can only develop what exists potentially 
and in germ. All the functions which we exercise, 
moral, intellectual, and physical, are more or less un- 



38 VOCAL CULTURE. 

developed and shackled, and education aims, or should 
aim, to promote their growth, to remove the shackles 
and thus to lift man into an atmosphere of freedom 
and spontaneity. Principles and rules which arc at 
first objective, must become sul>j< ctivi . Growth of every 
kind proceeds from the passive to the active and t In- 
spontaneous. Man is passive to the degree that he is 
undeveloped. As he develops, he becomes more and 
more a law to himself. The law that was at first 
written upon tablets of stone is gradually transferred 
to his mind and his heart ; and he may finally break 
the tablets and forget their existence. 

Of all our faculties, — physical, at least, — that of 
speech is, perhaps, the most imperfectly developed, 
and is, in consequence, less a law to itself, and the 
most dependent upon outside principles and rules for 
its efficient exercise — a fact which the ancient Greeks 
and Eomans recognized and acted upon far more than 
we do. The great importance which they attached to 
vocal culture was, indeed, attributable to causes which 
do not now exist to the same extent. The mystery of 
printing had not yet been discovered. An ambitious 
politician could not bawl out a speech in the forum, 
in violation of all the laws of effective utterance, as 
our legislators do, with nobody to hear him, and have 
ten thousand copies printed off and sent to his consti- 
tuents, and all free of expense to himself, in the bar- 
gain. No ! he had to face his constituents, and say 
what he had to say, in the most accomplished manner. 



VOCAL CULTURE. 39 

The Athenian orator owed the success of his speech 
as much to its vocal delivery as to its matter ; and if 
the former was not of a character to please his suscep- 
tible countrymen, he spoke in vain. But if the same 
causes do not now exist for the highest vocal culture, 
there are others which do, and which are infinitely 
more weighty. The Greek and Eoman religion was a 
mere cultus, with nothing to teach. But the Christian 
religion is distinguished from all others by its being 
a religion of the Book, by its teaching of doctrines, 
and this teaching is done throughout all Christendom 
chiefly through the medium of the voice. And yet, 
strange to say, the grand importance of a special vocal 
culture for an effective discharge of this great office, 
is almost entirely overlooked! Were the voices of 
those destined for the sacred ministry of Christ care- 
fully tuned for the delivery of the great spiritual truths 
which they are commissioned to promulgate, what an 
increased vitality, and power, and impressiveness, 
would be imparted to their teachings ! The Bible too 
— what a new life could be given to it, were all the 
capabilities which it possesses for effective reading, 
fully developed by an accomplished voice — capabili- 
ties greater, even if we regard it in its purely literary 
character, than those possessed by any other book ! 

" O the holiness of their living, and the painfullness 
of their preaching," exclaims the old English divine, 
Thomas Fuller. The good man used the word pain- 
fulness in a sense different from its present : he meant 



40 VOCAL CULTURE. 

that the early apostles took great pains in their preach- 
ing. " Many things/' says Archbishop Trench, " would 
not be so 'painful' in the present sense of the word, 
if they had been more 'painful' in ti per- 

haps some sermons." To carry this remark a little 
further, many sermons would nut be BO painful in the 
present sense of the word, if the cultivation of the voice 
were made a mure prominent feature of theologi 
education. Vocal culture Beldom constitutes a part 
of the organism of our coll tdtheoloj ools. 

It is an outside thing, wholly incidental. A travelling 
elocutionist will happen to come along, a mere adven- 
turer — an unworthy disciple of r J , perhaps, 
with a very slim intellectual outfit. lit; proposes bo 
work miracles. A class is accordingly formed among 
the students, for a course of ten lessons, it may be. 
Some exercises in articulation are bawled over, which, 
in the words of Othello, "frighten the isle from its 
propriety." The self-styled professor pockets their 
money, obtains some extravagant testimonials to the 
excellence of his system, from the D.D.'s and LL.D.'s 
of the college, and goes on his way, rejoicing, and the 
unfortunate students are again left to shift for them- 
selves until some other adventurer comes along, to 
hoodwink them again with professions of miracle- 
working. 

"If any one would sing," says Ware, "he attends a 
master, and is drilled in the very elementary princi- 
ples ; and only after the most laborious process, dares 



VOCAL CULTURE. 41 

to exercise his voice in public. ... If lie were learn- 
ing to play on the flute for public exhibition, what 
hours and days would he spend, in giving facility to 
his fingers,. and attaining the power of the sweetest 
and most expressive execution. If he were devoting 
himself to the organ, what months and years would he 
labour, that he might know its compass, and be master 
of its keys, and be able to draw out, at will, all its 
various combinations of harmonious sound, and its 
full richness and delicacy of expression. 

" And yet he will fancy that the grandest, the most 
various and most expressive of all instruments which 
the Infinite Creator has fashioned by the union of an 
intellectual soul with the powers of speech, may be 
played upon without study or practice ; he comes to 
it a mere uninstructed tyro, and thinks to manage all 
its stops, and command the whole compass of its varied 
and comprehensive power. He finds himself a bungler 
in the attempt, is mortified at his failure, and settles 
it in his mind for ever that the attempt is vain." 

"The art of reading well," says Dr. Bush, in his 
"Philosophy of the Human Yoice," "is an accomplish- 
ment, that all desire to possess, many think they have 
already, and that a few set-about to acquire. These, 
believing their power is altogether in their ' Genius,' 
are, after a few lessons from an Elocutionist, disap- 
pointed at not becoming themselves at once masters 
of the art ; and with the restless vanity of their belief, 
abandon the study, for some new subject of trial and 
4* 



42 VOCAL CULTURE. 

failure. Such cases of infirmity result in part from 
the wavering character of the human tribe; but they 
chiefly arise from defects in the usual course of in- 
struction. Go to some, may we say all of our Coll 
and Universities; and observe how the art of Bpeaking 
is not taught there. See a boy of but fifteen y< 
with no want of youthful diffidence, and not without 
a craving desire to learn, Bent upon a stage, pale and 
choking with apprehension; being forced into an 
attempt to do that, without instruction, which he came 
purposely to learn; and furnishing amusement to his 
classmates, by a pardonable awkwardness, that should 
be punished, in the person of his pretending but neg- 
lectful preceptor, with little less than scourging. Then 
visit a Conservatorio of music ; observe there, the 
mentary outset, the orderly task, the masterly di 
pline, the unwearied superintendence, and the incessant 
toil to reach the utmost accomplishment in the Sing- 
ing- Voice ; and afterwards do not be surprised that 
the pulpit, the senate, the bar, and the chair of medical 
professorship, are filled with such abominable drawlers, 
mouthers, mumblers, clutterers, squeakers, chanters, 
and mongers in monotony ! nor that the Schools of 
Singing are constantly sending abroad those great 
instances of vocal wonder, who triumph along the 
crowded resorts of the world ; who contribute to the 
halls of fashion and wealth, their most refined source 
of gratification; who sometimes quell the pride of 
rank, by a momentary sensation of envy ; and who 



VOCAL CULTURE. 43 

draw forth the admiration, and receive the crowning 
applause of the Prince and the Sage." 

The prescribed limits of this Essay will not allow 
me to carry this subject farther than merely to advert 
to one other point — namely, the importance of a care- 
ful vocal culture, and, what must always accompany 
it, a thorough study of the English language and 
literature, in our female seminaries. Were but half 
the time devoted to these subjects that is now spent in 
acquiring a barren smattering of the French language, 
and of the sciences, how inestimably superior would 
be the result ! The study of her vernacular is a sacred 
duty devolving upon every woman who would be true 
to the peculiar mission of her sex. Let her acquire as 
many foreign tongues as she pleases — the more the 
better — but she must not, and cannot, justifiably, ne- 
glect her native tongue ; for to her, more than to man, 
belongs the high duty of transmitting it to the succeed- 
ing generation in its idiomatic purity, free from the 
affectations and conceits which characterize the diction 
of the multitudinous productions of would-be authors. 

Every woman whose station permits it, should know, 
and learn to appreciate, all in her native literature that 
is excellent, forcible, and graceful in style, and pure 
and beautiful and noble in sentiment ; and more than 
this, she should cultivate that vocal expression of it 
which would carry it with potency to the hearts of her 
children. 

Great is the moral influence which woman's voice 



44 VOCAL CULTURE. 

exerts in her family, in society, and in all the relations 
and responsibilities of life ; but the possibilities of tin's 
moral influence, which remain to be developed, have 

hitherto been hardly suspected. 

A lady will bestow great care upon her hand, and 
it is very proper that she should, for among beautiful 
things, a well-shaped, graceful, and fair hand, certainly 

does not occupy the lowest rank, and is by no means 
to be despised. She will j guard her face 

against the effects of sun and wind, with which, also, 
nobody can find fault; — but how seldom does Bhe 
think of the power so mighty to charm that lies slum- 
bering in her voice I 

When we regard the transcendent personal attrac- 
tions which nature sometimes bestows upon her favour- 
ites, we feel "the might, the majesty of loveliness ;" but, 
alas ! how often is the clasping charm rudely unlocked, 
and the numbing spell thawed, when we hear tt 
angels speak ! We wonder that so much harshness 
can be united with so much beauty. 

And then, again, we will meet with one, with whom 
nature has dealt less generously in the bestowal of 
personal charms, but whose voice, soft and winning, 
comes upon us as the dew upon the hill of Herrnon. 
She is idealized by her voice. We see her, not as she 
actually is, but in a transfiguring light, which softens 
and symmetrizes many an irregularity of feature and 
a disproportion of person. 

Shakspeare, who has left nothing unsaid, bears a 



VOCAL CULTURE. 45 

most affecting witness to the power of woman's voice, 
in that passage, the sublimest in its pathos which the 
literature of this world has to show, wherein the heart- 
broken and desolate old king bewails the death of his 
daughter Cordelia.- By her angelic ministrations, she 
had become to him, when robbed of every earthly 
consolation and hope, the only object of interest and 
affection in the world. While bending over her life- 
less form, he mutters to himself these touching words : 

" Her voice was ever soft, 
Gentle and low ; an excellent thing in woman." 

As the Past glinted through the distracted mind of 
the desolate father, nothing vibrated so musically in 
his memory as the voice of this dear girl. With it was 
associated all her 

"Little, nameless, unrememloered acts 
Of kindness and of love." 

If the principle of criticism which I have briefly 
set forth in the First Part of this Essay be admitted, 
namely, that every literary art-product, especially 
every true poem, must be at first received in as passive 
a state as possible, that the feelings must ever be the 
pioneers of the judgment, and that to them must be 
committed the gathering of material for the discursive 
understanding, it follows, that that reading of a poem 
which would not only mirror, but amplify and complete 
the poetic feeling of the hearer, would be the best 
preparation that could be afforded for the after-work 



46 VOCAL CULTURE. 

of analysis, and its ultimate purpose, a higher and 
more comprehensive synthesis of thought and feeling. 
No other means in the absence of an adequate ima- 
gination, (and such an imagination must be extremely 

rare,) can be employed to reveal all the sly, lurking, 
and subtle elements of suggestiveness which must be 
felt before they can be successfully analyzed and 
grasped in their entireness. 

Vocal culture, I repeat, must go hand in hand with 
the study of Literature. The vocal expression of the 
higher Poetry, whos constitute so large an 

element of the sentiment, and are in fact the very 
incarnation of the sentiment, is as indispensable to its 
fullest appreciation, as is the vocal or instrumental 
expression of music. These (onus can seldom be ima- 
gined — they must be expressed by the voice, before 
they can be fully recognized and responded to. And 
the teacher or literary lecturer, who is able to give to 
his class or his audience an adequate vocal expression 
of a poem, will thus render it more appreciable than 
if he were to preach about it in grandiloquent language 
for a week. It is vain to analyze what has not been 
felt to some extent — be it a poem or a picture, or 
whatever else demands an emotional response ; and 
however limited any one's ability to feel may be, it 
should first be brought into play, and repeatedly, be- 
fore any analysis is attempted. 

It must never be forgotten that the analysis of poetic 
forms has an end beyond itself — and that end is, to 



VOCAL CULTURE. 4T 

widen spontaneous and unconscious receptivity. To 
resolve the forms into which the Poet has cast his con- 
ceptions, into their elements, and to make these elements 
distinct objects of thought, is not of itself sufficient to 
appreciate those forms 93sthetically — but it serves to 
nourish, so to speak, the unconscious and spontaneous 
recognition and appreciation of those forms. Conscious 
analysis must bloom into unconscious synthesis, or it 
fails of its end. 



CONCLUDING REMARKS- 

It was not my purpose in the preceding essay, to set forth any 
principles and rules, or to give any special exercises, for the cul- 
tivation of the voice. Furthermore, I have no faith in the effi- 
cacy of the vague generalities, and common-place instructions in 
which an author must necessarily indulge, (whatever may be 
his qualifications as a Vocal Philosopher,) who is confined to the 
prescribed limits of an Introduction to a book having for its 
special purpose the furnishing "only of good material for vocal 
expression. The grand science of the human voice cannot be 
compressed into the limits of a nut-shell ; and the earnest stu- 
dent, who, in the absence of the living teacher, searches for aid 
in the few introductory pages usually devoted to elocutionary 
instruction in ordinary " Readers," will be sadly disappointed. 
If he ask for bread, he will receive a stone. He will be presented 
with some unintelligible jargon about "abdominal muscles/ 7 
"throat tones," "chest tones," and "head tones;" — some grave 
faults in pronunciation will be pointed out to him, such as only 
the most illiterate are guilty of ; — he will be told that a paren- 
thesis should be read more rapidly, and in a lower tone than the 
surrounding parts; — that antithetical words should receive dif- 
ferent inflections, that one affection of the voice is used to ex- 



48 CONCLUDING REMARKS. 

press this kind of feeling, and another that; — that he must 
pause sufficiently at the end of a poetical trerse, to mark its in- 
dividuality as a verse, and exhibit the rhyme (advice which ho 
will probably not believe a -word of, if ho happens to know any- 
thing about the secrets of melody) ; — that one set of sentiments, 
emotions, and passions require a high key, another a medium 
key, and another, a Ioav key, etc., etc.; and finally, as summing 
up all, that he must read naturally, ami as if lie were speaking 
to some one. It would be untrue to say that all the introductory 
instruction in reading books amounts to no more than this — 
but it is not untrue to say, that this is its general char;: 

Let the earnest student, who knows that "good things arc dif- 
ficult," and who strives and labours to realize a lofty standard of 
vocal excellence, if he find not the living teacher who is able to 
meet his wants, devote himself to a reverential study of a work 
to which all writers on Elocution for the third of a century have 
been indebted, and to which they themselves have added little or 
nothing of importance, — I allude to "The Philosophy of the 
Human Voice," by Dr. James Rush, one of the greatest produc- 
tions of Observative Science of which the present century can 
boast. The analysis exhibited in this profound work, will satisfy 
much of the curiosity of him who desires to read the history of 
his voice; "for," to adopt the words of the learned author, in 
the introduction to the first edition, " I feel assured, by the result 
of the rigid method of observation employed throughout the in- 
quiry, that if science should ever come to one consent on this 
point, it will not differ essentially from this record. The world 
has long asked for light on this subject. It may not choose to 
accept it now; but having idly suffered its own opportunity for 
discovery to go by, it must, under any capricious postponement, 
at last receive it here. . . . Truth, whose first steps should be 
always vigorous and alone, is often obliged to lean for support 
and progress on the arm of Time ; who then only, when sup- 
porting her, seems to have laid aside his wings." 



AN 



ELOCUTIONARY MANUAL. 



W 



WHAT IS LITERATURE? 
BY THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. 

^HAT is it that we mean by Literature? Popularly, 
and amongst the thoughtless, it is held to in- 
clude everything that is printed in a book. Little logic 
is required to disturb that definition ; the most thought- 
less person is easily made aware that in the idea of 
literature one essential element is, — some relation to a 
general and common interest of man, so that what ap- 
plies only to a local, or professional, or merely personal 
interest, even though presenting itself in the shape of 
a book, will not belong to literature. So far the defi- 
nition is easily narrowed ; and it is as easily expanded. 
For not only is much that takes a station in books not 
literature, but, inversely, much that really is literature 
never reaches a station in books. The weekly sermons 
of Christendom, that vast pulpit literature which acts 
so extensively upon the popular mind, — to warn, to 

5 (49) 



50 WHAT IS LITE RAT UREt 

uphold, to renew, to comfort, to alarm, — does not attain 
the sanctuary of libraries in the ten thousandth part 
of its extent. The drama again, as, for instance, the 
finest of Shakspeare's plays in England, and all lead- 
ing Athenian plays in the noontide of the Attic stage, 
operated as a literature on the public mind, and were 
(according to the strictest letter of that term) published 
through the audiences that witnessed their representa- 
tion some time before they were published as things 
to be read ; and they were published in this scenical 
mode of publication with much more effect than they 
could have had as books, during ages of costly copying 
or of costly printing. 

Books, therefore, do not suggest an idea co-extensive 
and interchangeable with the idea of literature ; since 
much literature, scenic, forensic, or didactic (as from 
lecturers and public orators), may never come into 
books ; and much that does come into books may con- 
nect itself with no literary interest. But a far more 
important correction, applicable to the common vague 
idea of literature, is to be sought, — not so much in a 
better definition of literature, as in a sharper distinc- 
tion of the two functions which it fulfils. In that 
great social organ, which collectively we call literature, 
there may be distinguished two separate offices that 
may blend and often do so, but capable severally of a 
severe insulation, and naturally fitted for reciprocal 
repulsion. There is, first, the literature of knowledge, 
and, secondly,, the literature of power. The function 



WHAT IS LITERATURE? 51 

of the first is, to teach; the function of the second is, 
to move: the first is a rudder, the second an oar or a 
sail. The first speaks to the mere discursive under- 
standing ; the second speaks ultimately, it may happen, 
to the higher understanding or reason, but always 
through affections of pleasure and sympathy. Remotely, 
it may travel towards an object seated in what Lord 
Bacon calls dry light; but proximately it does and 
must operate, else it ceases to be a literature of power, 
on and through that humid light which clothes itself 
in the mists and glittering iris of human passions, de- 
sires, and genial emotions. Men have so little reflected 
on the higher functions of literature, as to find it a 
paradox if one should describe it as a mean or subor- 
dinate purpose of books to give information. But this 
is a paradox only in the sense which makes it honour- 
able to be paradoxical. "Whenever we talk in ordinary 
language of seeking information or gaining knowledge, 
we understand the words as connected with something 
of absolute novelty. But it is the grandeur of all truth 
which can occupy a very high place in human interests, 
that it is never absolutely novel to the meanest of 
minds : it exists eternally by way of germ or latent 
principle in the lowest as in the highest, needing to 
be developed but never to be planted. To be capable 
of transplantation is the immediate criterion of a truth 
that ranges on a lower scale. Besides which, there is 
a rarer thing than truth, namely, power or deep sym- 
pathy with truth. What is the effect, for instance 



52 UJIA T IS LITERATLKE? 

upon society, of children ? By the pity, by the ten- 
derness, and by the peculiar modes of admiration, 
which connect themselves with the helplessness, with 
the innocence, and with the simplicity of children, not 
only are the primal affections strengthened and con- 
tinually renewed, but the qualities which are dearest 
in the sight of Heaven — the frailty, for instance, which 
appeals to forbearance, the innocence which symbolizes 
the heavenly, and the simplicity which is most alien 
from the worldly, are kept up in perpetual remem- 
brance, and their ideals are continually refreshed. A 
purpose of the same nature is answered by the higher 
literature, namely, the literature of power. What do 
yocs learn from Paradise Lost? Nothing at all. What 
do you learn from a cookery-book ? Something new, 
something that you did not know before, in every 
paragraph. But would you therefore put the wretched 
cookery-book on a higher level of estimation than the 
divine poem ? What you owe to Milton is not any 
knowledge, of which a million separate items are still 
but a million of advancing steps on the same earthly 
level; what you owe, is power, that is, exercise and 
expansion to your own latent capacity of sympathy 
with the infinite, where every pulse and each separate 
influx is a step upwards — a step ascending as upon a 
Jacob's ladder from earth to mysterious altitudes above 
the earth. All the steps of knowledge, from first to 
last, carry you further on the same plane, but could 
never raise you one foot above your ancient level of 



WHAT IS LITERATURE? 53 

earth ; whereas, the very first step in power is a flight 
— is an ascending into another element where earth is 
forgotten. 

Were it not that human sensibilities are ventilated 
and continually called out into exercise by the great 
phenomena of infancy, or of real life as it moves 
through chance and change, or of literature as it re- 
combines these elements in the mimicries of poetry, 
romance, &c, it is certain that, like any animal power 
or muscular energy falling into disuse, all such sensi- 
bilities would gradually droop and dwindle. It is in 
relation to these great moral capacities of man that the 
literature of power, as contradistinguished from that 
of knowledge, lives and has its field of action. . . . 
The commonest novel, by moving in alliance with 
human fears and hopes, with human instincts of wrong 
and right, sustains and quickens those affections. 
Calling them into action, it rescues them from torpor. 
And hence the pre-eminency over all authors that 
merely teach, of the meanest that moves; or that teaches, 
if at all, indirectly by moving. The very highest work 
that has ever existed in the literature of knowledge is 
but a provisional work : a book upon trial and suffer- 
ance, and quamdiu bene se gesserit. Let its teaching be 
even partially revised, let it be but expanded, nay 
even let its teaching be but placed in a better order, 
and instantly it is superseded. "Whereas the feeblest 
works in the literature of power, surviving at all, sur- 
vive as finished and unalterable amongst men. For 
5* 



54 W II A T 1 8 L I T E R A TURK? 

instance, the Principia of Sir Isaac Newton was a book 
militant on earth from the first. In all a (' its 

progress it would have to fight for its existence; first, 
as regards absolute truth ; secondly, when that combat 
is over, as regards its form or mode of presenting the 
truth. And as soon as a La Place, or anybody else, 
builds higher upon the foundations htid by this book, 
effectually he throws it out of the sunshine into decay 
and darkness; by weapons won from this book he 
superannuates and destroys this book, so that soon 
the name of Newton remains, as a mere nominis umbra, 
but his book, as a living power, has transmigrated into 
other forms. Now, on the contrary, the Iliad, the Pro- 
metheus of ^Eschylus, — the Othello or King Lear, — 
the Hamlet or Macbeth, — and the Paradise Lost, are 
not militant but triumphant forever as long as the 
languages exist in which they speak or can be taught 
to speak. They never can transmigrate into new in- 
carnations. To reproduce these in new forms, or varia- 
tions, even if in some things they should be improved, 
would be to plagiarize. A good steam-engine is pro- 
perly superseded by a better. But one lovely pastoral 
valley is not superseded by another, nor a statue of 
Praxiteles by a statue of Michael Angelo. These 
things are not separated by imparity, but by disparity. 
They are not thought of as unequal under the same 
standard, but as different in kind, and as equal under a 
different standard. Human works of immortal beauty 
and works of nature in one respect stand on the same 



WE A T IS LITERATURE? 55 

footing : they never absolutely repeat each other ; 
never approach so near as not to differ; and they 
differ not as better and worse, or simply by more and 
less ; they differ by undecipherable and incommunica- 
ble differences, that cannot be caught by mimicries, 
nor be reflected in the mirror of copies, nor become 
ponderable in the scales of vulgar comparison. 

.... At this hour, five hundred years since their 
creation, the tales of Chaucer, never equalled on this 
earth for their tenderness, and for life of picturesque- 
ness, are read familiarly by many in the charming lan- 
guage of their natal day, and by others in the mo- 
dernizations of Dryden, of Pope, and Wordsworth. 
At this hour, one thousand eight hundred years since 
their creation, the Pagan tales of Ovid, never equalled 
on this earth for the gayety of their movement and 
the capricious graces of their narrative, are read by 
all Christendom. This man's people and their monu- 
ments are dust ; but he is alive : he has survived them, 
as he told us that he had it in his commission to do, 
by a thousand years ; " and shall a thousand more." 

All the literature of knowledge builds only ground- 
nests, that are swept away by floods, or confounded by 
the plough ; but the literature of power builds nests 
in aerial altitudes of temples sacred from violation, or 
of forests inaccessible to fraud. This is a great pre- 
rogative of the power literature ; and it is a greater 
which lies in the mode of its influence. The knowledge 
literature, like the fashion of this world, passeth away. 



56 WHAT IS LITERATURE? 

An Encyclopaedia is its abstract ; and ; in this respect, 
it may be taken for its speaking symbol, that, before 
one generation has passed, an Encyclopaedia is super- 
annuated ; for it speaks through the dead memory and 
unimpassioned understanding, which have not the rest 
of higher faculties, but are continually enlarging and 
varying their phylacteries. But all literature, properly 
so called — literature xar' i&xw* for the very same 
reason that it is so much more durable than the litera- 
ture of knowledge — is (and by the very same propor- 
tion it is) more intense and electrically searching in 
its impressions. The directions in which the tragedy 
of this planet has trained our human feelings to play, 
and the combinations into which the poetry of this 
planet has thrown our human passions of love and 
hatred, of admiration and contempt, exercise a power 
bad or good over human life, that cannot be contem- 
plated, when stretching through many generations, 
without a sentiment allied to awe.f And of this let 

* Par excellence, pre-eminently. 

f The reason why the broad distinctions between the two lite- 
ratures of power and knowledge so little fix the attention, lies in 
the fact, that a vast proportion of books — history, biography, 
travels, miscellaneous essays, &c. — lying in a middle zone, con- 
found these distinctions by interblending them. All that we call 
" amusement" or " entertainment," is a diluted form of the power 
belonging to passion, and also a mixed form ; and where threads 
of direct instruction intermingle in the texture with these threads 
of power, this absorption of the duality into one representative 
nuance neutralizes the separate perception of either. Fused into 
a tertium quid, or neutral state, they disappear to the popular 
eye as the repelling forces, which in fact they are. 



INFLUENCE OF POETRY. 57 

every one be assured — that he owes to the impassioned 
books which he has read, many a thousand more of 
emotions than he can consciously trace back to them. 
Dim by their origination, these emotions yet arise in 
him, and mould him through life like the forgotten 
incidents of childhood. 



ON THE REFINING AND ELEVATING 
INFLUENCE OF POETRY. 

BY WILLIAM ELLERY CHANGING, 

L E believe that poetry, far from injuring society, 
is one of the great instruments of its refinement 
and exaltation. It lifts the mind above ordinary life, 
gives it a respite from depressing cares, and awakens 
the consciousness of its affinity with what is pure and 
noble. In its legitimate and highest efforts, it has the 
same tendency and aim with Christianity, — that is, to 
spiritualize our nature. True, poetry has been made 
the instrument of vice, the pander of bad passions ; 
but when genius thus stoops, it dims its fires, and 
parts with much of its power ; and even when poetry 
is enslaved to licentiousness and misanthropy, she can- 
not wholly forget her true vocation. Strains of pure 
feeling, touches of tenderness, images of innocent hap- 
piness, sympathies with what is good in our nature, 



58 INFLUENCE OF POETRY. 

bursts of scorn or indignation at the hollowness of the 
world, passages true to our moral nature, often escape 
in an immoral work, and show us how hard it is for a 
gifted spirit to divorce itself wholly from what is good. 
Poetry has a natural alliance with our best affections. 
It delights in the beauty and sublimity of outward 
nature and of the soul. It indeed portrays with terri- 
ble energy the excesses of the passions ; but they are 
passions which show a mighty nature, which are full 
of power, which command awe, and excite a deep 
though shuddering sympathy. Its great tendency and 
purpose is to carry the mind beyond and above the 
beaten, dusty, weary walks of ordinary life ; to lift it 
into a purer element, and to breathe into it more pro- 
found and generous emotion. It reveals to us the 
loveliness of nature, brings back the freshness of 
youthful feeling, revives the relish of simple pleasures, 
keeps unquenched the enthusiasm which warmed the 
spring-time of our being, refines youthful love, 
strengthens our interest in human nature by vivid 
delineations of its tenderest and loftiest feelings, 
spreads our sympathies over all classes of society, 
knits us by new ties with universal being, and, through 
the brightness of its prophetic visions, helps faith to 
lay hold on the future life. 

We are aware that it is objected to poetry that it 
gives wrong views and excites false expectations of 
life, peoples the mind with shadows and illusions, and 
builds up imagination on the ruins of wisdom. That 



INFLUENCE F POETRY. 59 

there is a wisdom against which poetry wars — the 
wisdom of the senses, which makes physical comfort 
and gratification the supreme good, and wealth the 
chief interest of life — we do not deny ; nor do we deem 
it the least service which poetry renders to mankind, 
that it redeems them from the thraldom of this earth- 
born prudence. But, passing over this topic, we would 
observe that the complaint against poetry, as abound- 
ing in illusion and deception, is, in the main, ground- 
less. In many poems there is more of truth than in 
many histories and philosophic theories. The fictions 
of genius are often the vehicles of the sublimest veri- 
ties, and its flashes often open new regions of thought, 
and throw new light on the mysteries of our being. 
In poetry, the letter is falsehood, but the spirit is often 
profoundest wisdom; And if truth thus dwells in the 
boldest fictions of the poet, much more may it be ex- 
pected in his delineations of life ; for the present life, 
which is the first stage of the immortal mind, abounds 
in the materials of poetry, and it is the highest office 
of the bard to detect this divine element among the 
grosser pleasures and labours of our earthly being. 
The present life is not wholly prosaic, precise, tame, 
and finite. To the gifted eye it abounds in the poetic. 
The affections which spread beyond ourselves, and 
stretch far into futurity ; the workings of mighty pas- 
sions, which seem to arm the soul with an almost 
superhuman energy; the innocent and irrepressible 
joy of infancy; the bloom, and buoyancy, and dazzling 



60 INFLUENCE OF TOETRY. 

hopes of youth. ; the throbbings of the heart when it 
first wakes to love, and dreams of a happiness too vast 
for earth; woman, with her beauty, and grace, and 
gentleness, and fulness of feeling, and depth of affec- 
tion, and her blushes of purity, and the tones and 
looks which only a mother's heart can inspire, — these 
are all poetical. It is not true that the poet paints a 
life which does not exist. He only extracts and con- 
centrates, as it were, life's ethereal essence, arrests and 
condenses its volatile fragrance, brings together its 
scattered beauties, and prolongs its more refined but 
evanescent joys ; and in this he does well ; for it is 
good to feel that life is not wholly usurped by cares 
for subsistence and physical gratifications, but admits, 
in measures which may be indefinitely enlarged, senti- 
ments and delights worthy of a higher being. This 
power of poetry to refine our views of life and happi- 
ness is more and more needed as society advances. It 
is needed to withstand the encroachments of heartless 
and artificial manners, which make civilization so 
tame and uninteresting. It is needed to counteract 
the tendency of physical science, which — being now 
sought, not, as formerly, for intellectual gratification, 
but for multiplying bodily comforts — requires a new 
development of imagination, taste, and poetry, to pre- 
serve men from sinking into an earthly, "material, 
epicurean life. 



THE CHURCH OF BROU. 61 



THE CHURCH OF BROU, 

BY MATTHEW AENOLB. 

I. 

THE CASTLE. 

^3% OWN the Savoy valleys sounding, 
/SIlJ Echoing round this castle old, 
'Mid the distant mountain chalets, 
Hark ! what bell for church is toll'd ? 



In the bright October morning, 
Savoy's Duke had left his bride ; 

From the Castle, past the drawbridge, 
Flow'd the hunter's merry tide. 

Steeds are neighing, gallants glittering ; 

Gay, her smiling lord to greet, 
From her mullion'd chamber casement 

Smiles the Duchess Marguerite. 

From Vienna by the Danube 

Here she came, a bride, in spring ; 

Now the autumn crisps the forest, 
Hunters gather, bugles ring. 

6 



62 THE CHURCH OF BROU. 

Hounds are pulling, prickers swearing, 
Horses fret, and boar- spears glance : 

Off! — They sweep the marshy forests, 
Westward, on the side of France. 

Hark ! the game's on foot ; they scatter :- 
Down the forest ridings lone, 

Furious, single horsemen gallop ; 
Hark ! a shout — a crash — a groan ! 

Pale and breathless, came the hunters, 
On the turf dead lies the boar ; 

God ! the Duke lies stretch'd beside him 
Senseless, weltering in his gore. 



In the dull October evening, 

Down the leaf-strewn forest road, 

To the Castle, past the drawbridge, 
Came the hunters with their load. 

In the hall, with sconces blazing, 

Ladies waiting round her seat, 
Cloth'd in smiles, beneath the dais, 

Sate the Duchess Marguerite. 

Hark 1 below the gates unbarring ! 

Tramp of men and quick commands ! 
" — 'T is my lord come back from hunting,"- 

And the Duchess claps her hands. 



THE CHURCH OF BROU. 63 

Slow and tired came the hunters I 

Stopp'd in darkness in the court ; 
" — Ho, this way, ye laggard hunters! 

To the hall ! What sport, what sport ?" — 

•Slow they enter' d with their Master, 

In the hall they laid him down : 
On his coat were leaves and blood-stains, 

On his brow an angry frown. 

Dead her princely youthful husband 

Lay before his youthful wife : 
Bloody, 'neath the flaring sconces, 

And the sight froze all her life. 

In Vienna, by the Danube, 

Kings hold revel, gallants meet ; 
Gay of old amid the gayest 

"Was the Duchess Marguerite. 

In Vienna, by the Danube, 

Feast and dance her youth beguil'd ; 

Till that hour she never sorrow'd 
But from then she never smil'd. 

'Mid the Savoy mountain valleys, 

Far from town or haunt of man, 
Stands a lonely church, unfinish'd, 

Which the Duchess Maud began. 



64 THE CHURCH OF BRO U. 

Old, that Duchess stern began it, 
In gray age, with palsied hands ; 

But she died as it was building. 
And the Church unfinish'd stands ; 

Stands as erst the builders left it, 
When she sunk into her grave ; 

Mountain greensward paves the chancel, 
Harebells flower in the nave. 

" In my Castle all is sorrow," — 
Said the Duchess Marguerite then, 

' Guide me, vassals, to the mountains I 
We will build the church again." — 

Sandall'd palmers, faring homeward, 
Austrian knights from Syria came : 

"Austrian wanderers bring, warders, 
Homage to your Austrian dame." 

From the gate the warders answer'd, 
" Gone, knights, is she you knew ; 

Dead our Duke, and gone his Duchess 
Seek her at the Church of Brou." 

Austrian knights and march- worn palmers 
Climb the winding mountain way ; 

Keach the valley, where the fabric 
Kises higher day by day. 



THE CHURCH OF BROU. 65 

Stones are sawing, hammers ringing ; 

On the work the bright sun shines \ 
In the Savoy mountain meadows, 

By the stream, below the pines. 

On her palfrey white, \jhe Duchess 
Sate and watch'd her working train ; 

Flemish carvers, Lombard gilders, 
German masons, smiths from Spain. 

Clad in black, on her white palfrey, 

Her old architect beside — 
There they found her in the mountains, 

Morn, and noon, and eventide. 

There she sate, and watch'd the builders, 
Till the Church was roof 7 d and done ; 

Last of all, the builders rear'd her 
In the nave a tomb of stone. 

On the tomb two forms they sculptur'd, 

Lifelike in the marble pale ; 
One, the Duke, in helm and armour, 

One, the Duchess, in her veil. 

Eound the tomb the carv'd stone fret-work 

Was at Easter tide put on ; 
Then the Duchess closed her labours 

And she died at the St. John. 



C6 THE CHURCH OF BROU. 

II. 
THE CHURCH. 

Upon the glistening leaden roof 

Of the new Pile, the sunlight shines ; 
The stream goes leaping by. 
The hills are cloth 'd with pines sun-proof, 
'Mid bright green fields, below the pines, 
Stands the Church on high. 
What Church is this, from men aloof? 
" Tis the Church of Brou. 

At sunrise, from their dewy lair, 

Crossing the stream, the kine are seen 
Bound the wall to stray ; 
The churchyard wall that clips the square 
Of shaven hill-sward trim and green, 
Where last year they lay. 
But all things now are order'd fair 
Bound the Church of Brou. 

On Sundays, at the matin chime, 
The Alpine peasants, two and three, 
Climb up here to pray. 
Burghers and dames, at summer's prime, 
Bide out to church from Chambery, 
Dight with mantles gay. 
But else it is a lonely time 
Bound the Church of Brou. 



THE CHURCH OF BROU. * 67 

On Sundays, too, a priest doth come 
From the wall'd town beyond the pass, 
Down the mountain way. 
. And then you hear the organ's hum, 

You hear the white-rob'd priest say mass 
And the people pray. 
But else the woods and fields are dumb 
Bound the Church of Brou. 

And after church, when mass is done, 
The people to the nave repair, 
Bound the tomb to stray, 
And marvel at the Forms of stone, 

And praise the chisell'd broideries rare, 
Then they drop away. 
The Princely pair are left alone 
In the Church of Brou. 

III. 

THE TOMB. 

So rest, forever rest, Princely Pair ! 
In your high Church, 'mid the still mountain air, 
"Where horn, and hound, and vassals, never come. 
Only the blessed Saints are smiling dumb, 
From the rich painted windows of the nave, 
On aisle, and transept, and your marble grave : 
Where thou, young Prince, shalt never more arise 
From the fring'd mattress where thy Duchess lies, 



68 THE CHURCH OF BROU. 

On autumn mornings, when the bugle sounds, 
And ride across the drawbridge with thy hounds, 
To hunt the boar in the crisp woods till eve. 
And thou, Princess, shalt no more receive, 
Thou and thy ladies, in the hall of state, 
The jaded hunters with their bloody freight, 
Come benighted to the castle gate. 

So sleep, forever sleep, O Marble Pair ! 
And if ye wake, let it be then, when fair 
On the carv'd Western Front a flood of light 
Streams from the setting sun, and colours bright 
Prophets, transflgur'd Saints, and Martyrs brave, 
1 n the vast western window of the nave ; 
And on the pavement round the Tomb there glints 
A chequer-work of glowing sapphire tints, 
And amethyst and ruby; — then unclose 
Your eyelids on the stone where ye repose, 
And from your broider'd pillows lift your heads, 
And rise upon your cold white marble beds, 
Awl looking down on the warm rosy tints 
That chequer, at your feet, the illumin'd flints, 
Say — " What is this ? we are in bliss — forgiven — 
Behold the pavement of the courts of Heaven ! " — 
Or let it be on autumn nights, when rain 
Doth rustlingly above your heads complain 
On the smooth leaden roof, and on the walls 
Shedding her pensive light at intervals 
The moon through the clere-story windows shines, 
And the wind washes in the mountain pines. 



A COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, ETC. 69 

Then, gazing up through the dim pillars high, 

The foliag'd marble forest where ye lie, 

" Hush" — ye will say — * it is eternity ; 

This is the glimmering verge of Heaven, and these 

The columns of the Heavenly Palaces." 

And in the sweeping of the wind your ear 

The passage of the Angels' wings will hear, 

And on the lichen- crusted leads above, 

The rustle of the eternal rain of Love. 



DESCRIPTION OF A COUNTRY GENTLE- 
MAN OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 

BY THOMAS BABINGTON IACAULAY. 



ST 



l E should be much mistaken if we pictured to 
ourselves the squires of the seventeenth century 
as men bearing a close resemblance to their descendants, 
the county members and chairmen of quarter sessions 
with whom we are familiar. The modern country 
gentleman generally receives a liberal education, passes 
from a distinguished school to a distinguished college, 
and has every opportunity to become an excellent 
scholar. He has generally seen something of foreign 
countries. A considerable part of his life has gener- 
ally been passed in the capital ; and the refinements 
of the capital follow him into the country. There is, 



70 A COUNTRY GENTLEMAN 

perhaps no class of dwellings so pleasing as the rural 
seats of the English gentry. In the parks and plea- 
sure grounds, nature, dressed, yet not disguised by 
art, wears her most alluring form. In the buildings, 
good sense and good taste combine to produce a 
happy union of the comfortable and the graceful. The 
pictures, the musical instruments, the library, would 
in any other country be considered as proving the 
owner to be an eminently polished and accomplished 
man. A country gentleman who witnessed the revo- 
lution was probably in receipt of about a fourth part 
of the rent which his acres now yield to his posterity. 
He was, therefore, as compared with his posterity, a 
poor man, and was generally under the necessity of 
residing, with little interruption, on his estate. To 
travel on the continent, to maintain an establishment 
in London, or even to visit London frequently, were 
pleasures in which only the great proprietors could 
indulge. It may be confidently affirmed, that of the 
squires whose names were in King Charles's commis- 
sions of peace and lieutenancy, not one in twenty went 
to town once in five years, or had ever in his life 
wandered so far as Paris. Many lords of manors had 
received an education differing little from that of their 
menial servants. The heir of an estate often passed 
his boyhood and youth at the seat of his family, with 
no better tutors than grooms and gamekeepers, and 
scarce attained learning enough to sign his name to a 
mittimus. If he went to school and to college, he 



OF TEE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. U 

generally returned before he was twenty to the seclu- 
sion of the old hall, and there, unless his mind was 
very happily constituted by nature, soon forgot his 
academical pursuits in rural business and pleasures. 
His chief serious employment was the care of his 
property. He examined samples of grain, handled 
pigs, and on market days made bargains over a tan- 
kard with drovers and hop -merchants. His chief 
pleasures were commonly derived from field-sports 
and from an unrefined sensuality. His language and 
pronunciation were such as we should now expect to 
hear only from the most ignorant clowns. His oaths, 
coarse jests, and scurrilous terms of abuse, were 
uttered with the broadest accent of his province. It 
was easy to discern, from the first words which he 
spoke, whether he came from Somersetshire or York- 
shire. He troubled himself little about decorating 
his abode, and, if he attempted decoration, seldom 
produced anything but deformity. The litter of a 
-farmyard gathered under the windows of his bed- 
chamber, and the cabbages and gooseberry bushes 
grew close to his hall door. His table was loaded with 
coarse plenty, and guests were cordially welcomed to 
it ; but, as the habit of drinking to excess was general 
in the class to which he belonged, and as his fortune 
did not enable him to intoxicate large assemblies daily 
with claret or canary, strong beer was the ordinary 
beverage. The quantity of beer consumed in those 
days was indeed enormous ; for beer then was to the 



T2 A COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, ETC. 

middle and lower classes not only all that beer now is, 
but all that wine, tea, and ardent spirits now are. It 
was only at great houses or on great occasions that 
foreign drink was placed on the board. The ladies 
of the house, whose business it had commonly been 
to cook the repast, retired as soon as the dishes had 
been devoured, and left the gentlemen to their ale and 
tobacco. The coarse jollity of the afternoon was 
often prolonged till the revellers were laid under the 
table. 

It was very seldom that the country gentleman 
caught glimpses of the great world, and what he saw 
of it tended rather to confuse than to enlighten his 
understanding. His opinions respecting religion, 
government, foreign countries, and former times, hav- 
ing been derived, not from study, from observation, 
or from conversation with enlightened companions, 
but from such traditions as were current in his own 
small circle, were the opinions of a child. He adhered 
to them, however, with the obstinacy which is gener- 
ally found in ignorant men accustomed to be fed with 
flattery. His animosities were numerous and bitter. 
He hated Frenchmen and Italians, Scotchmen and 
Irishmen, papists and Presbyterians, Independents and 
Baptists, Quakers and Jews. Towards London and 
Londoners he felt an aversion which more than once 
produced important political effects. His wife and 
daughter were in tastes and acquirements below a 
housekeeper or a stillroom maid of the present day. 



A RILL FROM THE TO WN PUMP. 73 

They stitched and spun, brewed gooseberry wine, 
cured marigolds, and made the crust for the venison 
pasty. 



A RILL FROM THE TOWN PUMP. 

(prom "twice-told tales.") 

BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 

Scene: — The corner of two principal streets. The 
Town Pump talking through its nose. 

-icl^OON, by the north clock ! Noon, by the east ! 
>6x High noon, too, by these hot sunbeams, which 
fall, scarcely aslope, upon my head, and almost make the 
water bubble and smoke in the trough under my nose. 
Truly, we public characters have a tough time of it ! 
And, among all the town officers, chosen at March 
meeting, where is he that sustains, for a single year, 
the burden of such manifold duties as are imposed, in 
perpetuity, upon the Town Pump ? The title of "town 
treasurer " is rightfully mine, as guardian of the best 
treasure that the town has. The overseers of the poor 
ought to make me their chairman, since I provide 
bountifully for the pauper, without expense to him 
that pays taxes. I am at the head of the fire-depart- 
ment, and one of the physicians to the board of health. 
7 



74 A RILL FROM THE TOWN PUMP. 

As a keeper of the peace, all water-drinkers will con- 
fess me equal to the constable. I perform some of the 
duties of the town clerk, by promulgating public no- 
tices when they are posted on my front. To speak 
within bounds, I am the chief person of the munici- 
pality, and exhibit, moreover, an admirable pattern to 
my brother officers, by the cool, steady, upright, down- 
right, and impartial discharge of my business, and the 
constancy with which I stand to my post. Summer 
or winter, nobody seeks me in vain ; for, all day long, 
I am seen at the busiest corner, just above the market, 
stretching out my arms to rich and poor alike ; and at 
night, I hold a lantern over my head, both to show 
where I am, and keep people out of the gutters. 

At this sultry noontide, I am cupbearer to the 
parched populace, for whose benefit an iron goblet is 
chained to my waist. Like a dramseller on the mall 
at muster-day, I cry aloud to all and sundry, in my 
plainest accents, and at the very tiptop of my voice. 
Here it is, gentlemen I Here is the good liquor I Walk 
up, walk up, gentlemen, walk up, walk up ! Here is 
the superior stuff! Here is the unadulterated ale of 
father Adam, — better than Cognac, Hollands, Jamaica, 
strong beer, or wine of any price ; here it is by the 
hogshead or the single glass, and not a cent to pay I 
Walk up, gentlemen, walk up, and help yourselves ! 

It were a pity if all this outcry should draw no 
customers. Here they come. A hot day, gentlemen ! 
Quaff, and away again, so as to keep yourselves in a 



A RILL FROM THE TOWN PUMP. ?5 

nice cool sweat. You, my friend, will need another 
cupful, to wash the dust out of your throat, if it be as 
thick there as it is on your cow-hide shoes. I see 
that you have trudged half a score of miles to-day, 
and, like a wise man, have passed by the taverns, and 
stopped at the running brooks and well-curbs. Other- 
wise, betwixt heat without and fire within, you would 
have been burnt to a cinder, or melted down to nothing 
at all, in the fashion of a jelly-fish. Drink, and make 
room for that other fellow, who seeks my aid to 
quench the fiery fever of last night's potations, which 
he drained from no cup of mine. Welcome, most 
rubicund sir ! You and I have been great strangers, 
hitherto ; nor, to confess the truth, will my nose be 
anxious for a closer intimacy, till the fumes of your 
breath be a little less potent. Mercy on you, man ! 
the water absolutely hisses down your red-hot gullet, 
and is converted quite to steam, in the miniature 
tophet which you mistake for a stomach. Fill again, 
and tell me, on the word of an honest toper, did you 
ever, in cellar, tavern, or any kind of a dram-shop, 
spend the price of your children's food for a swig 
half so delicious ? ISTow, for the first time these ten 
years, you know the flavour of cold water. G-ood-by ; 
and, whenever you are thirsty, remember that I keep 
a constant supply, at the old stand. "Who next ? Oh, 
my little friend, you are let loose from school, and 
come hither to scrub your blooming face, and drown 
the memory of certain taps of the ferule, and other 



76 A RILL FROM THE TOWN PUMP. 

schoolboy troubles, in a draught from the Town Pump. 
Take it, pure as the current of your young life. Take 
it, and may your heart and tongue never be scorched 
with a fiercer thirst than now ! There, my dear child, 
put down the cup, and yield your place to this elderly 
gentleman, who treads so tenderly over the paving- 
stones, that I suspect he is afraid of breaking them. 
What ! he limps by, without so much as thanking me, 
as if my hospitable offers were meant only for people 
who have no wine-cellars. Well, well, sir, — no harm 
done, I hope ! Go draw the cork, tip the decanter ; 
but, when your great toe shall set you a-roaring, it 
will be no affair of mine. If gentlemen love the 
pleasant titillation of the gout, it is all one to the 
Town Pump. This thirsty dog, with his red tongue 
lolling out, does not scorn my hospitality, but stands 
on his hind legs and laps eagerly out of the trough. 
See how lightly he capers away again ! Jowler, did 
your worship ever have the gout ? * * * 

Your pardon, good people! I must interrupt my 
stream of eloquence, and spout forth a stream of water, 
to replenish the trough for this teamster and his two 
yoke of oxen, who have come from Topsfield, or some- 
where along that way. No part of my business is 
pleasanter than the watering of cattle. Look! how 
rapidly they lower the water-mark on the sides of the 
trough, till their capacious stomachs are moistened 
with a gallon or two apiece, and they can afford time 
to breathe it in, with sighs of calm enjoyment. Now 



A RILL FROM THE TOWN PUMP. *[*{ 

they roll their quiet eyes around the brim of their 
monstrous drinking - vessel. An ox is your true 
toper. * * * 

Ahem ! Dry work, this speechifying ; especially to 
an unpractised orator. I never conceived till now 
what toil the temperance lecturers undergo for my 
sake. Hereafter they shall have the business to them- 
selves. Do, some kind Christian, pump a stroke or 
two, just to wet my whistle. Thank you, sir. My 
dear hearers, when the world shall have been regen- 
erated by my instrumentality, you will collect your 
useless vats and liquor-casks into one great pile, and 
make a bonfire in honour of the Town Pump. And 
when I shall have decayed, like my predecessors, then, 
if you revere my memory, let a marble fountain, richly 
sculptured, take my place upon the spot. Such monu- 
ments should be erected everywhere, and inscribed 
with the names of the distinguished champions of my 
cause. * * * 

One o'clock ! Nay, then, if the dinner-bell begins to 
speak, I may as well hold my peace. — Here comes a 
pretty young girl of my acquaintance, with a large stone 
pitcher for me to fill. May she draw a husband, while 
drawing her water, as Eachel did of old ! Hold out 
your vessel, my dear ! There it is, full to the brim ; 
so now run home, peeping at your sweet image in the 
pitcher as you go ; and forget not, in a glass of my 
own liquor, to drink — "Success to the Town 
Pump!" 

7* 



78 WRECK OF THE HESPERUS. 

THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS. 
BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 

fT was the schooner Hesperus, 
That sailed the wintry sea; 
And the skipper had taken his little daughter, 
To bear him ccflhpany. 

Blue were her eyes as the fairy flax, 
Her cheeks like the dawn of day, 

And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds 
That ope in the month of May. 

The skipper he stood beside the helm, 

His pipe was in his mouth ; 
And he watched how the veering flaw did blow 

The smoke, now west, now south. 

Then up and spake an old sailor 

Had sailed the Spanish Main, 
"I pray thee, put into yonder port, 

For I fear a hurricane. 

"Last night the moon had a golden ring, 

And to-night no moon we see." 
The skipper he blew a whiff from his pipe, 

And a scornful laugh laughed he. 



WRECK OF THE HESPERUS. 79 

Colder and louder blew the wind, 

A gale from the north-east; 
The snow fell hissing in the brine, 

And the billows frothed like yeast. 

Down came the storm, and smote amain 

The vessel in its strength; 
She shuddered and paused like a frighted steed, 

Then leaped her cable's length. 

" Come hither, come hither, my little daughter, 

And do not tremble so ; 
For I can weather the roughest gale 

That ever wind did blow." 

He wrapped her warm in his seaman's coat, 

Against the stinging blast; 
He cut a rope from a broken spar 

And bound her to the mast. 

" father, I hear the church bells ring ; 

O, say, what may it be?" 
" 'Tis a fog-bell, on a rock-bound coast ; " 

And he steered for the open sea. 

" father, I hear the sound of guns ; 

0, say, what may it be?" 
" Some ship in distress, that cannot live 

In such an angry sea." 



80 WRECK OF THE HESPERUS. 

"0 father, I see a gleaming light: 

0, say, what may it be?" 
But the father answered never a word : 

A frozen corpse was he. 

Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark, 
With his face turned to the skies, 

The lantern gleamed, through the gleaming snow, 
On his fixed and glassy eyes. 

Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed 

That saved she might be; 
And she thought of Christ, who stilled the wave 

On the Lake of Galilee. 

And fast through the midnight, dark and drear, 
Through the whistling sleet and snow, 

Like a sheeted ghost the vessel swept 
Towards the reef of Norman's Woe.* 

And ever, the fitful gusts between, 

A sound came from the land; 
It was the sound of the trampling surf, 

On the rocks and the hard sea sand. 

The breakers were right beneath her bows ; 

She drifted a dreary wreck; 
And a whooping billow swept the crew, 

Like icicles, from her deck. 

* A reef of rocks on the northern coast of Massachusetts, be- 
tween Manchester and Gloucester. 



WRECK OF THE HESPERUS. 81 

She struck where the white and fleecy waves 

Looked soft as carded wool; 
But the cruel rocks they gored her side 

Like the horns of an angry bull. 

Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice, 

With the masts, went by the board; 
Like a vessel of glass she stove and sank : 

Ho! Ho! the breakers roared. 

* * * * # ■& * 
At daybreak, on the bleak sea beach, 

A fisherman stood aghast 
To see the form of a maiden fair 

Lashed close to a drifting mast. 

The salt sea was frozen on her breast, 

The salt tears in her eyes; 
And he saw her hair, like the brown seaweed, 

On the billows fall and rise. 

Such was the wreck of the Hesperus, 

In the midnight and the snow: 
Christ save us all from a death like this, 

On the reef of Norman's Woe. 



SQUIRE BULL 



SQUIRE BULL AND HIS SON JONA THAN. 
BY JAMES KIRKE PAULDING. 

fOHN BULL was a choleric old fellow, who held 
a good manor in the middle of a great mill-pond, 
and which, by reason of its being quite surrounded by 
water, was generally called Bullock Island. Bull was 
an ingenious man, an exceedingly good blacksmith, a 
dexterous cutler, and a notable weaver and pot-baker 
besides. He also brewed capital porter, ale, and small 
beer, and was in fact a sort of Jack-of-all-trades, and 
good at each. In addition to these, he was a hearty 
fellow, an excellent bottle-companion, and passably 
honest as times go. 

But what tarnished all these qualities was a very 
quarrelsome, overbearing disposition, which was al- 
ways getting him into some scrape or other. The 
truth is, he never heard of a quarrel going on among 
his neighbours, but his fingers itched to be in the 
thickest of them ; so that he was hardly ever seen 
without a broken head, a black eye, or a bloody nose. 
Such was Squire Bull, as he was commonly called by 
the country-people his neighbours,- — one of those 
odd, testy, grumbling, boasting old codgers, that never 
get credit for what they are, because they are always 
pretending to be what they are not. 



AND HIS SON JONATHAN. 83 

The squire was as tight a hand to deal with in doors 
as out ; sometimes treating his family as if they were 
not the same flesh and blood, when they happened to 
differ with him in certain matters. One day he got 
into a dispute with his youngest son Jonathan, who 
was familiarly called Brother Jonathan, about whe- 
ther churches ought to be called churches or meeting- 
houses, and whether steeples were not an abomination. 
The squire, either having the worst of the argument, 
or being naturally impatient of contradiction, (I can't 
tell which,) fell into a great passion, and swore he 
would physic such notions out of the boy's noddle. 
So he went to some of his doctors and got them to draw 
up a prescription, made up of thirty-nine different articles, 
many of them bitter enough to some palates. This he 
tried to make Jonathan swallow, and, finding he made 
villanous wry faces, and would not do it, fell upon 
him and beat him like fury. After this, he made the 
house so disagreeable to him, that Jonathan, though 
as hard as a pine-knot, and as tough as leather, could 
bear it no longer. Taking his gun and his axe, he put 
himself in a boat and paddled over the mill-pond to 
some new lands to which the squire pretended some 
sort of claim, intending to settle them, and build a 
meeting-house without a steeple as soon as he grew 
rich enough. 

"When he got over, Jonathan found that the land 
was quite in a state of nature, covered with wood, and 
inhabited by nobody but wild beasts. But, being a 



84 SQUIRE BULL 

lad of mettle, lie took his axe on one shoulder, and 
his gun on the other, marched into the thickest of the 
wood, and, clearing a place, built a log hut. Pursuing 
his labours, and handling his axe like a notable wood- 
man, he, in a few years, cleared the land, which he 
laid out into thirteen good farms ; and, building him- 
self a fine frame house, about half finished, began to 
be quite snug and comfortable. 

But Squire Bull, who was getting old and stingy, 
and, besides, was in great want of money, on account 
of his having lately been made to pay swinging 
damages for assaulting his neighbours, and breaking 
their heads, — the squire, I say, finding Jonathan was 
getting well to do in the world, began to be very much 
troubled about his welfare; so he demanded that 
Jonathan should pay him a good rent for the land 
which he had cleared and made good for something. 
He trumped up I know not what claim against him, 
and, under different pretences, managed to pocket all 
Jonathan's honest gains. In fact, the poor lad had not 
a shilling left for holiday occasions ; and, had it not 
been for the filial respect he felt for the old man, he 
would certainly have refused to submit to such im- 
positions. 

But, for all this, in a little time Jonathan grew up 
to be very large of his age, and became a tall, stout, 
double-jointed, broad-footed cub of a fellow, awkward 
in his gait, and simple in his appearance, but showing 
a lively, shrewd look, and having the promise of great 



AND HIS SON JONATHAN. 85 

strength when he should get his full growth. He was 
rather an odd-looking chap, in truth, and had many 
queer ways ; but everybody that had seen John Bull 
[saw a great likeness between them, and swore he was 
John's own boy, and a true chip of the old block. 
Like the old squire, he was apt to be blustering and 
saucy, but in the main was a peaceable sort of care- 
less fellow, that would quarrel with nobody, if you 
only let him alone. 

While Jonathan was outgrowing his strength, Bull 
kept on picking his pockets of every penny he could 
scrape together ; till at last one day when the squire 
was even more than usually pressing in his demands, 
which he accompanied with threats, Jonathan started 
up in a furious passion, and threw the tea-kettle at 
the old man's head. The choleric Bull was hereupon 
exceedingly enraged ; and, after calling the poor lad 
an undutiful, ungrateful, rebellious rascal, seized him 
by the collar, and forthwith a furious scuffle ensued. 
This lasted a long time; for the squire, though in 
years, was a capital boxer, and of most excellent bot- 
tom. At last, however, Jonathan got him Under, and, 
before he would let him up, made him sign a paper 
giving up all claim to the farms, and acknowledging 
the fee-simple to be in Jonathan forever. 



86 THE ALPINE SHEEP. 



THE ALPINE SHEEP. 



BY MRS. MARIA WHITE LOWELL. 



(addressed to a friend, after the loss of a child.) 



w : 



k HEN on my ear your loss was knell'd, 
And tender sympathy upburst, 
A little spring from memory well'd, 

Which once had quench'd my bitter thirst, 



And I was fain to bear to you 

A portion of its mild relief, 
That it might be a healing dew, 

To steal some fever from your grief. 

After our child's untroubled breath 
Up to the Father took its way, 

And on our home the shade of Death 
Like a long twilight haunting lay, 

And friends came round, with us to weep 
Her little spirit's swift remove, 

The story of the Alpine sheep 
"Was told to us by one we love. 



THE ALPINE SHEEP. 87 

They, in the valley's sheltering care, 
Soon crop the meadow's tender prime, 

And when the sod grows brown and bare, 
The shepherd strives to make them climb 

To airy shelves of pasture green, 

That hang along the mountain's side, 

Where grass and flowers together lean, 

And down through mists the sunbeams slide. 

But naught can tempt the timid things 

The steep and rugged path to try, 
Though sweet the shepherd calls and sings, 

And sear'd below the pastures lie, 

Till in his arms his lambs he takes, 

Along the dizzy verge to go: 
Then, heedless of the rifts and breaks, 

They follow on o'er rock and snow. 

And in these pastures, lifted fair, 
More dewy- soft than lowland mead, 

The shepherd drops his tender, care, 
And sheep and lambs together feed. 

This parable, by Nature breathed, 
Blew on me as the south wind free 

O'er frozen brooks that flow unsheathed 
From icy thraldom to the sea. 



88 SPRING. 

A blissful vision through the night 
Would all my happy senses sway 

Of the Good Shepherd on the height, 
Or climbing up the starry way, 

Holding our little lamb asleep, 

While, like the murmur of the sea, 

Sounded that voice along the deep, 
Saying, "Arise, and follow me." 



SPEING. 

BY N. P. WILLIS. 

^%^£)HE Spring is here, the delicate -footed May, 
With its slight fingers full of leaves and 
flowers, 
And with it comes a thirst to be away, 

Wasting in wood-paths its voluptuous hours : 
A feeling that is like a sense of wings, 
Eestless to soar above these perishing things. 

We pass out from the city's feverish hum, 
To find refreshment in the silent woods; 

And Nature, that is beautiful and dumb, 
Like a cool sleep upon the pulses broods: 



BEST METHOD OF READING. 89 

Yet even there a restless thought will steal, 
To teach the indolent heart it still must/eeZ. 

Strange, that the audible stillness of the noon, 
The waters tripping with their silver feet, 

The turning to the light of leaves in June, 
And the light whisper as their edges meet: 

Strange, that they fill not, with their tranquil tone, 

The spirit, walking in their midst alone. 

There's no contentment in a world like this, 
Save in forgetting the immortal dream; 

We may not gaze upon the stars of bliss, 
That through the cloud-rifts radiantly stream ; 

Bird-like, the prisoned soul will lift its eye, 

And pine till it is hooded from the sky. 



BEST METHOD OF READING. 
BY HENRY REED. 

fT is not unfrequently thought that the true guid- 
ance for habits of reading is to be looked for in 
prescribed courses of reading, pointing out the books 
to be read, and the order of proceeding with them. 
Now, while this external guidance may, to a certain 
extent, be useful, I do believe that an elaborately pre- 
8* 



90 BEST METHOD OF HEADING. 

scribed course of reading would be found neither de- 
sirable nor practicable. It does not leave freedom 
enough to the movements of the reader's own mind ; 
it does not give free enough scope to choice. Our 
communion with books, to be intelligent, must be 
more or less spontaneous. It is not possible to antici- 
pate how or when an interest may be awakened in 
some particular subject or author, and it would be far 
better to break away from the prescribed list of books, 
in order to follow out that interest while it is a thought- 
ful impulse. It would be a sorry tameness of intellect 
that would not, sooner or later, work its way out of 
the track of the best of any such prescribed courses. 
This is the reason, no doubt, why they are so seldom 
attempted, and why, when attempted, they are so apt 
to fail. 

It may be asked, however, whether every thing is 
to be left to chance or caprice ; whether one is to read 
what accident puts in the way, — what happens to be 
reviewed or talked about. No! far from it: there 
would, in this, be no more exercise of rational will, 
than in the other process: in truth, the slavery to 
chance is a worse evil than slavery to authority. So 
far as the origin of a taste for reading can be traced 
in the growth of the mind, it will be found, I think, 
mostly in the mind's own prompting ; and the power 
thus engendered is, like all other powers in our being, 
to be looked to as something to be cultivated and 
chastened, and then its disciplined freedom will prove 



A LITERARY CRITICISM. 91 

more and more its own safest guide. It will provide 
itself with more of philosophy than it is aware of in 
its choice of books, and will the better understand its 
relative virtues. On the other hand, I apprehend that 
often a taste for reading is quenched by rigid and in- 
judicious prescription of books in which the mind 
takes no interest, can assimilate nothing to itself, and 
recognises no progress but what the eye takes count 
of in the reckoning of pages it has travelled over. It 
lies on the mind, unpalatable, heavy, undigested food. 
But reverse the process ; observe or engender the in- 
terest as best you may, in the young mind, and then 
work with that, — expanding, cultivating, chasten- 
ing it. 



A LITERARY CRITICISM. 
BY JOSEPH DENNIE. 

Jack and Gill 

Went up a hill, 
To fetch a bucket of water ; 

Jack fell down 

And broke his crown, 
And Gill came tumbling after. 

MONGr critical writers, it is a common remark 
that the fashion of the times has often given a 
temporary reputation to performances of very little 
merit, and neglected those much more deserving of 



92 A LITERARY CRITICISM. 

applause. I therefore rejoice that it has fallen to my 
lot to rescue from neglect this inimitable poem ; for, 
"whatever may be my diffidence, as I shall pursue the 
manner of the most eminent critics, it is scarcely pos- 
sible to err. The fastidious reader will doubtless 
smile when he is informed that the work, thus highly 
praised, is a poem consisting only of four lines ; but 
as there is no reason why a poet should be restricted 
in his number of verses, as it would be a very sad 
misfortune if every rhymer were obliged to write a 
long as well as a bad poem, and more particularly as 
these verses contain more beauties than we often find 
in a poem of four thousand, all objections to its brevity 
should cease. I must, at the same time, acknowledge 
that at first I doubted in what class of poetry it should 
be arranged. Its extreme shortness, and its uncom- 
mon metre, seemed to degrade it into a ballad ; but its 
interesting subject, its unity of plan, and, above all, 
its having a beginning, middle, and an end, decide its 
claim to the epic rank. I shall now proceed, with the 
candor, though not with the acuteness, of a good critic, 
to analyze and display its various excellencies. 

The opening of the poem is singularly beautiful : — 

Jack and Gill — 

The first duty of the poet is to introduce his subject ; 
and there is no part of poetry more difficult. We are 
told by the great critic of antiquity that we should 



A LITERARY CRITICISM. 93 

avoid beginning " ab ovo" but go into the business at 
once. Here our author is very happy ; for, instead of 
telling us, as an ordinary writer would have done, who 
were the ancestors of Jack and Gill, that the grand- 
father of Jack was a respectable farmer, that his 
mother kept a tavern at the sign of the Blue Bear, and 
that Gill's father was a justice of the peace, (once of 
the quorum,) together with a catalogue of uncles and 
aunts, he introduces them to us at once in their proper 
persons. 

The choice, too, of names is not unworthy of con- 
sideration. It would doubtless have contributed to 
the splendor of the poem to have endowed the heroes 
with long and sounding titles, which, by dazzling the 
eyes of the reader, might prevent an examination of 
the work itself. These adventitious ornaments are 
justly disregarded by our author, who, by giving us 
plain Jack and Gill, has disdained to rely on extrinsic 
support. In the very choice of appellations he is, 
however, judicious. Had he, for instance, called the 
first character John, he might have given him more 
dignity ; but he would not so well harmonize with his 
neighbour, to whom, in the course of the work, it will 
appear he must necessarily be joined. 

The personages being now seen, their situation is 
next to be discovered. Of this we are immediately, 
informed in the subsequent line, when we are told 

Jack and Gill 
Went up a hill. 



94 A LITERARY CRITICISM. 

Here the imagery is distinct, yet the description con- 
cise. We instantly figure to ourselves the two per- 
sons travelling up an ascent, which we may accommo- 
date to our own ideas of declivity, barrenness, rocki- 
ness, sandiness, &c, all which, as they exercise the 
imagination, are beauties of a high order. The reader 
will pardon my presumption, if I here attempt to 
broach a new principle, which no critic, with whom I 
am acquainted, has ever mentioned. It is this, that 
poetic beauties may be divided into negative and posi- 
tive, the former consisting of mere absence of fault, the 
latter in the presence of excellence ; the first of an in- 
ferior order, but requiring considerable critical acumen 
to discover them, the latter of a higher rank, but ob- 
vious to the meanest capacity. To app^y the principle 
in this case, the poet meant to inform us that two per- 
sons were going up a hill. Now, the act of going up 
a hill — although. Locke would pronounce it a very 
complex idea, comprehending person, rising ground, 
trees, &c, &c, — is an operation so simple as to need 
no description. Had the poet, therefore, told us how 
the two heroes went up, whether in a cart or a wagon, 
and entered into the thousand particulars which the 
subject involves, they would have been tedious, be- 
8 cause superfluous. The omission of these little inci- 
dents, and telling us simply that they went up the hill, 
no matter how, is a very high negative beauty. 

Having ascertained the names and conditions of the 
parties, the reader becomes naturally inquisitive into 



A LITERARY CRITICISM. 95 

their employment, and wishes to know whether their 
occupation is worthy of them. This laudable curiosity 
is abundantly gratified in the succeeding lines ; for 

Jack and Gill 
Went up a hill, 
To fetch a bucket of water. 

Here we behold the plan gradually unfolding, a new 
scene opens to our view, and the description is ex- 
ceedingly beautiful. We now discover their object, 
which we were before left to conjecture. We see the 
two friends, like Py lades and Orestes, assisting and 
cheering each other in their labours, gaily ascending 
the hill, eager to arrive at the summit, and to — fill 
their bucket. Here, too, is a new elegance. Our 
acute author could not but observe the necessity of 
machinery, which has been so much commended by 
critics, and admired by readers. Instead, however, of 
introducing a host of gods and goddesses, who might 
have only impeded the journey of his heroes, by the 
intervention of the bucket, — which is, as it ought to 
be, simple and conducive to the progress of the poem, 
— he has considerably improved on the ancient plan. 
In the management of it, also, he has shown much 
judgment, by making the influence of the machinery 
and the subject reciprocal : for while the utensil car- 
ries on the heroes, it is itself carried on by them. 

It has been objected, (for every Homer has his 
Zoilus,) that their employment is not sufficiently dig- 



96 A LITERARY CRITICISM. 

nified for epic poetry ; but, in answer to this, it must 
be remarked, that it was the opinion of Socrates, and 
many other philosophers, that beauty should be esti- 
mated by utility ; and surely the purpose of the heroes 
must have been beneficial. They ascended the rugged 
mountain to draw water ; and drawing water is cer- 
tainly more conducive to human happiness than draw- 
ing blood, as do the boasted heroes of the Iliad, or 
roving on the ocean, and invading other men's pro- 
perty, as did the pious iEneas. Yes! they went to 
draw water. Interesting scene ! It might have been 
drawn for the purpose of culinary consumption; it 
might have been to quench the thirst of the harmless 
animals who relied on them for support; it might 
have been to feed a sterile soil, and to revive the 
drooping plants which they raised by their labours. 
Is not our author more judicious than Apollonius, 
who chooses for the heroes of his Argonautics a set 
of rascals undertaking to steal a sheepskin ? And, if 
dignity is to be considered, is not drawing water a cir- 
cumstance highly characteristic of antiquity ? Do we 
not find the amiable Rebecca busy at the well ? Does 
not one of the maidens in the Odyssey delight us by 
her diligence in the same situation? and has not a 
learned Dean proved that it was quite fashionable in 
Peloponnesus ? Let there be an end to such frivolous 
remarks. 

But the descriptive part is now finished, and the 
author hastens to the catastrophe. At what part of 



A LITERARY CRITICISM. 9T 

the mountain the well was situated, what was the 
reason of the sad misfortune, or how the prudence of 
Jack forsook him, we are not informed ; but so, alas ! 
it happened, 

Jack fell down — 

Unfortunate John! At the moment when he was 
nimbly, for aught we know, going up the hill, perhaps 
at the moment when his toils were to cease, and he 
had filled the bucket, he made an unfortunate step, 
his centre of gravity, as the philosophers would say, 
fell beyond his base, and he tumbled. The extent of 
his fall does not, however, appear until the next line, 
as the author feared to overwhelm us by too immediate 
a disclosure of his whole misfortune. Buoyed by 
hope, we suppose his affliction not quite remediless, 
that his fall is an accident to which the wayfarers of 
this life are daily liable, and we anticipate his imme- 
diate rise to resume his labours. But how are we un- 
deceived by the heart-rending tale that 

Jack fell down 

And broke his crown — 

Nothing now remains but to deplore the premature 
fate of the unhappy John. The mention of the crown 
has much perplexed the commentators. But my 
learned reader will doubtless agree with me in con- 
jecturing that, as the crown is often used metaphori- 
cally for the head, and as that part is, or, without any 



98 A LITERARY CRITICISM. 

disparagement to the unfortunate sufferer, might have 

been, the heaviest, it was really his pericranium which 

sustained the damage. Having seen the fate of Jack, 

we are anxious to know the lot of his companion. 

Alas! 

And Gill came tumbling after. 

Here the distress thickens on us. Unable to support 
the loss of his friend, he followed him, determined to 
share his disaster, and resolved that, as they had gone 
up together, they should not be separated as they 
came down. 

Of the bucket we are told nothing ; but as it is pro- 
bable that it fell with its supporters, we have a scene 
of misery unequalled in the whole compass of tragic 
description. Imagine to ourselves Jack rapidly de- 
scending, perhaps rolling over and over down the 
mountain, the bucket, as the lighter, moving along, 
and pouring forth (if it had been filled) its liquid 
stream, Gill following in confusion, with a quick and 
circular and headlong motion ; add. to this the dust, 
which they might have collected and dispersed, with 
the blood which must have flowed from John's head, 
and we will witness a catastrophe highly shocking, and 
feel an irresistible impulse to run for a doctor. The 
sound, too, charmingly "echoes to the sense," — 

Jack fell down 
And broke his crown, 
And Gill came tumbling after. 



A LITERARY CRITICISM. 99 

The quick succession of movements is indicated by an 
equally rapid motion of the short syllables ; and in 
the last line Grill rolls with a greater sprightliness and 
vivacity than even the stone of Sisyphus. 

Having expatiated so largely on its particular merits, 
let us conclude by a brief review of its most promi- 
nent beauties. The subject is the fall of men, — a 
subject, high, interesting, worthy of a poet ; the heroes, 
men who do not commit a single fault, and whose mis- 
fortunes are to be imputed, not to indiscretion, but to 
destiny. To the illustration of the subject, every part 
of the poem conduces. Attention is neither wearied 
by multiplicity of trivial incidents, nor distracted by 
frequency of digression. The poet prudently clipped 
the wings of imagination, and repressed the extrava- 
gance of metaphorical decoration. All is simple, plain, 
consistent. The moral, too, — that part without which 
poetry is useless sound, — has not escaped the view of 
the poet. When we behold two young men, who, but 
a short moment before, stqod up in all the pride of 
health, suddenly falling down a hill, how must we 
lament the instability of all things ! 



^*a 



100 THE HEIGHT OF THE RIDICULOUS. 



THE HEIGHT OF THE RIDICULOUS. 
BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 

f WROTE some lines once on a time 
In wondrous merry mood, 
And thought, as usual, men would say 
They were exceeding good. 

They were so queer, so very queer, 

I laugh'd as I would die ; 
Albeit, in the general way, 

A sober man am I. 

I call'd my servant, and he came: 

How kind it was of him, 
To mind a slender man like me, 

He of the mighty limb ! 

"These to the printer," I exclaim'd, 

And, in my humourous way, 
I added, (as a trifling jest,) 

"There'll be the devil to pay." 

He took the paper, and I watch'd, 

And saw him peep within; 
At the first line he read, his face 

Was all upon the gTin. 



GIBBON'S DECLINE AND FALL. 101 

He read the next ; the grin grew broad, 

And shot from ear to ear; 
He read the third; a chuckling noise 

I now began to hear. 

The fourth; he broke into a roar; 

The fifth, his waistband split ; 
The sixth, he burst five buttons off, 

And tumbled in a fit. 

Ten days and nights, with sleepless eye, 

I watch'd that wretched man, 
And since, I never dare to write 

As funny as I can. 



GIBBON'S "DECLINE AND FALL OF THE 
ROMAN EMPIRE:' 

In the following extracts from the Memoirs of his Life and 
"Writings, the historian relates the first conception, the com- 
mencement, and the completion, of his great work : 

2f)T was at Eome, on the 15th of October, 1764, as I 

jB sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while 

,the bare-footed friars were singing vespers in the 

Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline 

and fall of the city first started to my mind. But my 
9* 



102 GIBBON'S DECLINE AND FALL 

original plan was circumscribed to the decay of the 
city rather than of the empire : and, though my read- 
ing and reflections began to point towards that object, 
some years elapsed, and several avocations intervened, 
before I was seriously engaged in the execution of that 
laborious work. 

******** 
No sooner was I settled in my house and library, 
than I undertook the composition of the first volume 
of my History. At the outset all was dark and doubt- 
ful ; even the title of the work, the true aera of the 
Decline and Fall of the Empire, the limits of the in- 
troduction, the division of the chapters, and the order 
of the narrative ; and I was often tempted to cast away 
the labour of seven years. The style of an author 
should be the image of his mind, but the choice and 
command of language is the fruit of exercise. Many 
experiments were made before I could hit the middle 
tone between a dull chronicle and a rhetorical decla- 
mation : three times did I compose the first chapter, 
and twice the second and third, before I was tolerably 
satisfied with their effect. In the remainder of the 
way I advanced with a more equal and easy pace ; but 
the fifteenth and sixteenth chapters have been reduced 
by three successive revisals, from a large volume to 
their present size, and they might still be compressed, 
without any loss of facts or sentiments. An opposite 
fault may be imputed to the concise and superficial 
narrative of the first reigns from Commodus to Alex- 



OF THE R03IAN EMPIRE. 103 

ander; a fault of which I have never heard, except 
from Mr. Hume in his last journey to London. Such 
an oracle might have been consulted and obeyed with 
rational devotion ; but I was soon disgusted with the 
modest practice of reading the manuscript to my 
friends. Of such friends, some will praise from polite- 
ness, and some will criticise from vanity. The author 
himself is the best judge of his own performance ; no 
one has so deeply meditated on the subject, no one is 
so sincerely interested in the event. 

I have presumed to mark the moment of concep- 
tion : I shall now commemorate the hour of my final 
deliverance. It was on the day, or rather night, of 
the 27th of June, 1787, between the hours of eleven 
and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last page, 
in a summer-house in my garden. After laying down 
my pen, I took several turns in a berceau, or covered 
walk of acacias, which commands a prospect of the 
country, the lake, and the mountains. The air was 
temperate, the sky was serene, the silver orb of the 
moon was reflected from the waters, and all nature 
was silent. I will not dissemble the first emotions of 
joy on the recovery of my freedom, and, perhaps, the 
establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon 
humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my 
^ind, by the idea that I had taken an everlasting 
leave of an old and agreeable companion, and that 
whatsoever might be the future date of my History, 



104 GTBBON'S FIRST LOVE. 

the life of the historian must be short and precarious. 
I will add two facts, which have seldom oocurred in 
the composition of six, or at least of -five, quartos. 
1. My first rough manuscript, without any intermediate 
copy, has been sent to the press. 2. Not a sheet has 
been seen by any human eyes, except those of the 
author and the printer: the faults and the merits are 
exclusively my own. 

gibbon's first love. 

(from the historian's autobiography.) 

T hesitate, from the apprehension of ridicule, when 
1 i pproach the delicate subject of my early love. By 
word I do not mean the polite attention, the gal- 
lantry, without hope or design, which has originated 
in the spirit of chivalry, and is interwoven with the 
t wture of French manners. I understand by this 
ion the union of desire, friendship, and tender- 
. which is inflamed by a single female, which pre- 
fers her to the rest of her sex, and which seeks her 
possession as the supreme or the sole happiness of our 
being. I need not blush at recollecting the object of 
my choice ; and though my love was disappointed of 
success, I am rather proud that I was once capable of 
feeling such a pure and exalted sentiment. The per- 
sonal attractions of Mademoiselle Susan Curchod were 
embellished by the virtues and talents of the mind. 



GIBBON'S FIRST LOVE. 105 

Her fortune was humble, but her family was respect- 
able. Her mother, a native of France, had preferred 
her religion to her country. The profession of her 
father did not extinguish the moderation and philoso- 
phy of his temper, and he lived content with a small 
salary and laborious duty, in the obscure lot of minis- 
ter of Crassy, in the mountains that separate the Pays 
de Yaud from the county of Burgundy. In the soli- 
tude of a sequestered village he bestowed a liberal, 
aud even learned, education on his only daughter. She 
surpassed his hopes by her proficiency in the sciences 
and languages ; and in her short visits to some rela- 
tions at Lausanne, the wit, the beauty, and erudition 
of Mademoiselle Curchod were the theme of universal 
applause. The report of such a prodigy awakened 
my curiosity ; I saw and loved. I found her learned 
without pedantry, lively in conversation, pure in sen- 
timent, and elegant in manners ; and the first sudden 
emotion was fortified by the habits and knowledge of 
a more familiar acquaintance. She permitted me to 
make her two or three visits at her father's house. I 
passed some happy days there, in the mountains of 
Burgundy, and her parents honourably encouraged 
the connexion. In a calm retirement the gay vanity 
of youth no longer fluttered in her bosom ; she listened 
to the voice of truth and passion, and I might presume 
to hope that I had made some impression on a virtuous 
heart. At Crassy and Lausanne I indulged my dream 
of felicity : but on my return to England, I soon dis- 



106 GIBBON'S FIRST LOVE. 

covered that my father would not hear of this strange 
alliance, and that without his consent I was myself 
destitute and helpless. After a painful struggle I 
yielded to my fate : I sighed as a lover, I obi' 
son; my wound was insensibly healed by time, ab- 
sence, and the habits of a newlife. My cure was 
accelerated by a faithful report of the tranquillity and 
cheerfulness of the lady herself, and i Bubsided 

in friendship and esteem. The minister of Crassy soon 
afterwards died ; his stipend died with him ; his daugh- 
ter retired to Geneva, where, by teaching young ladies, 
she earned a hard subsistence for herself and her mo- 
ther; but in her lowest distress she maintained a spot- 
les ' reputation, and a dignified behaviour. A rich 
banker of Paris, a citizen of Geneva, had the good 
fortune and good sense to discover and possess this 
inestimable treasure ; and in the capital of taste and 
luxury she resisted the temptations of wealth, as she 
had sustained the hardships of indigence. The genius 
of her husband has exalted him to the most conspicu- 
ous station in Europe. In every change of prosperity 
and disgrace he has reclined on the bosom of a faith- 
ful friend ; and Mademoiselle Curchod is now the wife 
of M. Neckar, the minister, and perhaps the legislator, 
of the French monarchy.* 

* The celebrated Madame De Stael was their daughter. 



THE BLIND PREACHER. 10T 



THE BLIXD PREACHER.* 



BY WILLIAM WIET. 

(fROM A SERIES OF LETTERS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE " RICHMOND 
ARGUS," TJXDER THE ASSVHB9 NAME OF '"THE BRITISH SPY.") 

Richmond, Oct. 10, 1803. 

fHATE been, mv clear S , on an excursion 
through, the counties vdiich lie along the eastern 
side of the Blue Ridge. A general description of that 
country and its inhabitants may form the subject of a 
future letter. For the present, I must entertain you 
with an account of a most singular and interesting 
adventure, which I met "with in the course of the tour. 

* The " Blind Preacher," thus described by Mr. Wirt in 1803, 
was the Rev. James Waddel, born in Ireland in 1739, and brought 
here in his infancy by his parents, -who settled in Delaware county, 
Pennsylvania. He became a fine classical scholar, and first con- 
cluded to devote his life to teaching. But, his views undergoing a 
change, he determined to enter the ministry, and he was licensed 
in 1761, and settled over a Presbyterian church in Lancaster 
county. In 1776, he removed to Virginia ; and, his salary being- 
small, he received some pupils for classical instruction in his own 
house. He resided in Louisa county for twenty years, and died 
there. He lost his eyesight the latter part of his life. Patrick 
Henry pronounced him the greatest orator he ever heard. The 
late Dr. Archibald Alexander married one of his daughters, and 
hence the middle name of the Eev. James \Vaddel Alexander, 
D. D., of Xew York. To the latter Mr. Wirt stated, in 1830, that, 
so far from having coloured too highly the picture of his elo- 
quence, he had fallen below the truth.— [Prof. Cleveland's Soic 
in his "Compendium of American Literature."] 



108 THE BLIND PREACHER. 

It was one Sunday, as I travelled through the county 
of Orange, that my eye was caught by a cluster of 
horses tied near a ruinous, old wooden house in the 
forest, not far from the road- side. Having frequently 
seen such objects before in travelling through these 
States, I had no difficulty in understanding that this 
was a place of religious worship. 

Devotion alone should have stopped me to join in 
the duties of the congregation ; but I must confess, 
that curiosity to hear the preacher of such a wilder- 
ness, was not the least of my motives. On entering, I 
was struck with his preternatural appearance. He was 
a tall and very spare old man ; his head, which was 
covered with a white linen cap, his shrivelled hands, 
and his voice, were all shaking under the influence of 
a palsy ; and a few moments ascertained to me that he 
was perfectly blind. 

The first emotions which touched my breast were 
those of mingled pity and veneration. But ah ! how soon 
were all my feelings changed ! The lips of Plato were 
never more worthy of a prognostic swarm of bees, 
than were the lips of this holy man ! It was a day of 
the administration of the sacrament ; and his subject, 
of course, was the passion of our Saviour. I had 
heard the subject handled a thousand, times: I had 
thought it exhausted long ago. Little did I suppose, 
that in the wild woods of America, I was to meet with 
a man whose eloquence would give to this topic a 



THE BLIND PREACHER. 109 

new and more sublime pathos than I had ever before 
witnessed. 

As he descended from the pulpit, to distribute the 
mystic symbols, there was a peculiar, a more than 
human solemnity in his air and manner, which made 
my blood run cold, and my whole frame shiver. 

He then drew a picture of the sufferings of our 
Saviour; his trial before Pilate ; his ascent up Calvary; 
his crucifixion, and his death. I knew the whole his- 
tory ; but never, until then, had I heard the circum- 
stances so selected, so arranged, so coloured ! It was 
all new : and I seemed to have heard it for the first 
time in my life. His enunciation was so deliberate, 
that his voice trembled on every syllable ; and every 
heart in the assembly trembled in unison. His peculiar 
phrases had that force of description, that the original 
scene appeared to be, at that moment, acting before 
our eyes. "We saw the very faces of the Jews: the 
staring, frightful distortions of malice and rage. We 
saw the buffet ; my soul kindled with a flame of in- 
dignation ; and my hands were involuntarily and con- 
vulsively clinched. 

But when he came to touch on the patience, the for- 
giving meekness of our Saviour ; when he drew to the 
life his blessed eyes, streaming in tears to heaven ; his 
voice breathing to Grod, a soft and gentle prayer of 
pardon on his enemies, " Father, forgive them, for they 
know not what they do," — the voice of the preacher, 
which had all along faltered, grew fainter, and fainter, 
10 



110 THE BLIND PREACHER. 

until his utterance being entirely obstructed by the 
force of his feelings, he raised his handkerchief to his 
eyes, and burst into a loud and irrepressible flood of 
grief. The effect is inconceivable. The whole house 
resounded with the mingled groans, and sobs, and 
shrieks of the congregation. 

It was some time before the tumult had subsided, 
so far as to permit him to proceed. Indeed, judging 
by the usual, but fallacious standard of my own weak- 
ness, I began to be very uneasy for the situation of the 
preacher. For I could not conceive how he would be 
able to let his audience down from the height to which 
he had wound them, without impairing the solemnity 
and dignity of his subject, or perhaps shocking them 
by the abruptness of the fall. But, no ! the descent 
was as beautiful and sublime as the elevation had been 
rapid and enthusiastic. 

The first sentence, with which he broke the awful 
silence, was a quotation from Eousseau : " Socrates 
died like a philosopher, but Jesus Christ, like a God." 

I despair of giving you any idea of the effect pro- 
duced by this short sentence, unless you could per- 
fectly conceive the whole manner of the man, as well 
as the peculiar crisis in the discourse. Never before 
did I completely understand what Demosthenes meant 
by laying such stress on delivery. You are to bring 
before you the venerable figure of the preacher ; his 
blindness, constantly recalling to your recollection old 
Homer, Ossian, and Milton, and associating with his 



THE BLIND PREACHER. Ill 

performance the melancholy grandeur of their geniuses ; 
you are to imagine that you hear his slow, solemn, 
well-accented enunciation, and his voice of affecting, 
trembling melody ; you are to remember the pitch of 
passion and enthusiasm to which the congregation 
were raised ; and then the few minutes of portentous, 
death -like silence which reigned throughout the 
house ; the preacher removing his white handkerchief 
from his aged face, (even yet wet from the recent tor- 
rent of his tears,) and, slowly stretching forth the 
palsied hand which holds it, begins the sentence, 
"Socrates died like a philosopher," then pausing, 
raising his other hand, pressing them both clasped 
together with warmth and energy to his breast, lifting 
his " sightless balls " to heaven, and pouring his whole 
soul into his tremulous voice, — " but Jesus Christ, like 
a Grod ! " If he had been indeed and in truth an angel 
of light, the effect could scarcely have been more 
divine. 



112 THE SEA AXU THE MOUNTAIXS. 



THE SEA AND THE MOUNTAINS. 
BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 

fHAVE lived by the sea-shore, and by the moun- 
tains. No, I am not going to say which is best. 
The one where your place is, is the best for you. But 
this difference there is : you can domesticate moun- 
tains, but the sea is ferx naturue. You may have a 
hut, or know the owner of one, on the mountain-side ; 
you see a light half-way up its ascent in the evening, 
and you know there is a home, and you might share 
it. You have noted certain trees, perhaps ; you know 
the particular zone where the hemlocks look so black 
in October, when the maples and beeches have faded. 
All its reliefs and intaglios have electrotyped them- 
selves in the medallions that hang round the walls of 
your memory's chamber. The sea remembers nothing. 
It is feline. It licks your feet, — its huge flanks purr 
very pleasantly for you ; but it will crack your bones, 
and eat you, for all that, and wipe the crimsoned foam 
from its jaws, as if nothing had happened. The moun- 
tains give their lost children berries and water ; the 
sea mocks their thirst, and lets them die. The moun- 
tains have a grand, stupid, lovable tranquillity; the 



THE SEA AND THE MOUNTAINS. 113 

sea has a fascinating, treacherous intelligence. The 
mountains lie about like huge ruminants, their broad 
backs awful to look upon, but safe to handle. The 
sea smooths its silver scales until you cannot see their 
joints, — but their shining is that of a snake's belly, 
after all. In deeper suggestiveness I find as great a 
difference. The mountains dwarf mankind, and fore- 
shorten the procession of its long generations. The 
sea drowns out humanity and time ; it has no sympathy 
with either ; for it belongs to eternity, and of that it 
sings its monotonous song for ever and ever. 

Yet I should love to have a little box by the sea- 
shore. 1 should love to gaze out on the wild feline 
element from a front window of my own, just as I 
should love to look on a caged panther, and see it 
stretch its shining length, and then curl over and lap 
its smooth sides, and by-and-by begin to lash itself 
into rage, and show its white teeth, and spring at its 
bars, and howl the cry of its mad, but, to me, harm- 
less fury. 



10* 



114 MY KATE. 

MY KATE. 
BY ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 

HE was not as pretty as women I know, 
And yet all your best made of sunshine and 
snow 
Drop to shade, melt to nought in the long-trodden 

ways, 
While she's still remembered on warm and cold 

da y s - My Kate. 

Her air had a meaning, her movements a grace ; 
You turned from the fairest to gaze on her face : 
And when you had once seen her forehead and mouth, 
You saw as distinctly her soul and her truth — 

My Kate. 

Such a blue inner light from her eyelids outbroke, 
You looked at her silence, and fancied she spoke : 
When she did, so peculiar, yet soft was the tone, 
Though the loudest spoke also, you heard her alone — 

My Kate. 

I doubt if she said to you much that could act 
As a thought or suggestion : she did not attract 
In the sense of the brilliant or wise : I infer 
'Twas her thinking of others^, made you think of her — 

My Kate. 



MY K ATA. 115 

She never found fault with yon, never implied 
Your wrong by her right ; and yet men at her side 
Grew nobler, girls purer, as through the whole town 
The children were gladder that pulled at her gown — 

My Kate. 

i 

None knelt at her feet confessed lovers in thrall ; 

They knelt more to God than they used — that was all : 

If you praised her as charming, some asked what you 

meant, 

But the charm of her presence was felt when she 

went — 

My Kate. 

The weak and the gentle, the ribald and rude, 

She took as she found them, and did them all good ; 

It always was so with her — see what you have ! 

She has made the grass greener even here, with her 

grave — 

My Kate. 

My dear one ! — when thou wast alive with the rest, 

I held thee the sweetest, and loved thee the best ; 

And now thou art dead, shall I not take thy part 

As thy smiles used to do for thyself, my sweet 

Heart — 

My Kate? 



116 LITERATURE AND LEARNING, 



LITERATURE AND LEARNING, IN THE 
REIGN OF CHARLES II. 

BY THOMAS BABINGTON MAC AIT LAY. 

flTERATUKE which could be carried by the post 
bag then formed the greater part of the intel- 
lectual nutriment ruminated by the country divines 
and country justices. The difficulty and expense of 
conveying large packets, from place to place, were so 
great, that an extensive work was longer in making 
its way from Paternoster Row to Devonshire or 
Lancashire, than it now is in reaching Kentucky. 
How scantily a rural parsonage was then furnished, 
even with books the most necessary to a theologian, 
has already been remarked. The houses of the gentry 
were not more plentifully supplied. Few knights of 
the shire had libraries so good as may now perpetually 
be found in a servant's hall, or in the back parlor of 
a small shopkeeper. An esquire passed among his 
neighbours for a great scholar, if Hudibras and Baker's 
Chronicle, Tarlton's Jests, and the Seven Cham- 
pions of Christendom, lay in his hall window among 
the fishing-rods and fowling-pieces. No circulating 
library, no book society then existed, even in the 
capital ; but in the capital those students who could 
not afford to purchase largely, had a resource. The 



IN THE REIGN OF CHARLES II: 11? 

shops of the great booksellers, near St. Paul's Church- 
yard, were crowded every day, and all day long with 
readers ; and a known customer was often permitted 
to carry a volume home. In the country there was 
no such accommodation ; and every man was under 
the necessity of buying whatever he wished to read. 

As to the lady of the manor, and her daughters, 
their literary stores generally consisted of a prayer- 
book, and a receipt-book. But in truth they lost 
little by living in rural seclusion. For, even in the 
highest ranks, and in those situations which afforded 
the greatest facilities for mental improvement, the 
English women of that generation were decidedly 
worse educated than they have been at any other time 
since the revival of learning. At an earlier period 
they had studied the masterpieces of ancient genius. 
In the present day they seldom bestow much attention 
on the dead languages ; but they are familiar with the 
tongue of Pascal and Moliere, with the tongue of 
Dante and Tasso, with the tongue of Groethe and 
Schiller; nor is there any purer or more graceful 
English than that which accomplished women now 
speak and write. But, during the latter part of the 
seventeenth century, the culture of the female mind 
seems to, have been almost entirely neglected. If a 
damsel had the least smattering of literature, she was 
regarded as a prodigy. Ladies highly born, highly 
bred, and naturally quick witted, were unable to write 
a line in their mother tongue, without solecisms and 



118 LITERATURE AND LEARNING 

faults of spelling, such as a charity girl would now be 
ashamed to commit. 

The explanation may easily be found. Extravagant 
licentiousness, the natural effect of extravagant aus- 
terity, was now the mode ; and licentiousness had pro- 
duced its ordinary effect, the moral and intellectual 
degradation of women. To their personal beauty it 
was the fashion to pay rude and impudent homage. 
But the admiration and desire which they inspired 
were seldom mingled with respect, with affection, or 
with any chivalrous sentiment. The qualities which 
fit them to be companions, advisers, confidential 
friends, rather repelled than attracted the libertines of 

Whitehall In such circumstances the 

standard of female attainments was necessarily low ; 
arid it was more dangerous to be above that standard 
than to be beneath it. Extreme ignorance and fri- 
volity were thought less unbecoming in a lady than 
the slightest tincture of pedantry. Of the too cele- 
brated women whose faces we still admire on the walls 
of Hampton Court, few, indeed, were in the habit of 
reading anything more valuable than acrostics, lam- 
poons, and translations of the Clelia, and the Grand 
Cyrus. 

, The literary acquirements, even of the accomplished 
gentlemen of that generation, seem to have been some- 
what less solid and profound than at an earlier or a 
later period. Greek learning, at least, did not flourish 
among us in the days of Charles the Second, as it had 



IN THE REIGN OF CHARLES II. 119 

flourished before the civil war, or as it again flourished 
long after the revolution. There were undoubtedly 
scholars to whom the whole Greek literature, from 
Homer to Photius, was familiar ; but such scholars 
were to be found almost exclusively among the clergy 
resident at the universities, and even at the universi- 
ties were few, and were not fully appreciated. At 
Cambridge it was not thought by any means neces- 
sary that a divine should be able to read the Gospels 
in the original. Nor was the standard at Oxford 
higher. When, in the reign of William the Third, 
Christ Church rose up as one man to defend the 
genuineness of the Epistles of Phalaris, that great 
college, then considered as the first seat of philology 
in the kingdom, could not muster such a stock of 
Attic learning as is how possessed by several youths 
at every great public school. It may easily be sup- 
posed that a dead language, neglected at the universi- 
ties, was not much studied by men of the world. In 
a former age the poetry and eloquence of Greece had 
been the delight of Kaleigh and Falkland. In a later 
age the poetry and eloquence of Greece were the de- 
light of Pitt and Fox, of Windham, and Grenville. 
But during the latter part of the seventeenth century, 
there was in England scarcely one eminent statesman 
who could read with enjoyment a page of Sophocles 
or . Plato. 

Good Latin scholars were numerous. The language 
of Eome, indeed, had not altogether lost its imperial 



120 LITERATURE AND LEARNING 

character, and was still, in many parts of Europe, 
almost indispensable to a traveller or a negotiator. 
To speak it well was therefore a much more common 
accomplishment than in our time ; and neither Oxford 
nor Cambridge wanted poets, who, on a great occa- 
sion, could lay at the foot of the throne happy imita- 
tions of the verses in which Virgil and Ovid had cele- 
brated the greatness of Augustus. 

Yet even the Latin was giving way to a younger 
rival. France united at that time almost every species 
of ascendency. Her military glory was at the height. 
She had vanquished mighty coalitions. She had dic- 
tated treaties. She had subjugated great cities and 
provinces. She had forced the Castilian pride to yield 
her the precedence. She had summoned Italian princes 
to prostrate themselves at her footstool. Her au- 
thority was supreme in all matters of good breeding, 
from a duel to a minuet. She determined how a gen- 
tleman's coat must be cut, how long his peruke must 
be, whether his heels must be high or low, and whe- 
ther the lace on his hat must be broad or narrow. In 
literature she gave law to the world. The fame of her 
great writers rilled Europe. No other country could 
produce a tragic poet equal to Racine, a comic poet 
equal to Moliere, a trifler so agreeable as La Fontaine, 
a rhetorician so skilful as Bossuet. The literary glory 
of Italy and of Spain had set ; that of Germany had 
not yet dawned. The genius, therefore, of the emi- 
nent men who adorned Paris, shone forth with a 



IN THE REIGN OF CHARLES II. 121 

splendour which was set off to full advantage by con- 
trast. France, indeed, had at that time an empire over 
mankind, such as even the Eoman Eepublic never at- 
tained. For, when Eome was politically dominant, 
'she was in arts and letters the humble pupil of Greece. 
'France had, over the surrounding countries, at once 
the ascendency which Eome had over Greece, and the 
ascendency which Greece had over Eome. French 
was fast becoming the universal language, the language 
of fashionable society, the language of diplomacy. At 
several courts, princes and nobles spoke it more accu- 
rately and politely than their mother tongue. In our 
island there was less of this servility than on the con- 
tinent. Neither our good nor our bad qualities 
were those of imitators. Yet even here homage was 
paid, awkwardly, indeed, and sullenly, to the literary 
supremacy of our neighbours. The melodious Tuscan, 
so familiar to the gallants and ladies of the court of 
Elizabeth, sank into contempt. A gentleman, who 
quoted Horace or Terence, was considered in good 
company as a pompous pedant. But to garnish his 
conversation with scraps of French was the best proof 
which he could give of his parts and attainments* 
New canons of criticism, new models of style came 
into fashion. The quaint ingenuity which had de- 

* Butler, in a satire of great asperity, says : — 

" For, though to smatter words of Greek 
And Latin he the rhetorique 
Of pedants counted, and vainglorious, 
To smatter French is meritorious." 
11 



122 LITERATURE AND LEARNING 

formed the verses of Donne, and had been a blemish 
on those of Cowley, disappeared from our poetry. 
Our prose became less majestic, less artfully involved, 
less variously musical than that of an earlier age, but 
more lucid, more easy, and better fitted for controversy 
and narrative. In these changes it is impossible not 
to recognize the influence of French precept and of 
French example. Great masters of our language, in 
their most dignified compositions, affected to use French 
words, when English words, quite as expressive and 
melodious, were at hand : * and from France was im- 
ported the tragedy in rhyme, an exotic, which, in our 
soil, drooped, and speedily died. 

It would have been well if our writers had also 
copied the decorum which their great French contem- 
poraries, with few exceptions, preserved : for the pro- 
fligacy of the English plays, satires, songs, and novels 
of that age, is a deep blot on our national fame. The 
evil may easily be traced to its source. The wits and 
the Puritans had never been on friendly terms. There 
was no sympathy between the two classes. They 
looked on the whole system of human life from differ- 
ent points, and in different lights. The earnest of each 

* The most offensive instance which I remember is in a poem 
on the coronation of Charles the Second, by Dryden, who cer- 
tainly could not plead poverty as an excuse for borrowing words 
from any foreign tongue, — 

" Hither in summer evenings you repair, 
To taste the fraicheur of the cooler air." 






IN TEE REIQN OF CHARLES II. 123 

was the jest of the other. The pleasures of each were 
the torments of the other. To the stern precisian, 
even the innocent sport of the fancy seemed a crime. 
To light and festive natures the solemnity of the zeal-' 
ous brethren furnished copious matter of ridicule. 
From the Eeformation to the civil war, almost every 
writer, gifted with a fine sense of the ludicrous, had 
taken some opportunity of assailing the straight-haired, 
snuffling, whining saints, who christened their children 
out of the Book of Nehemiah, who groaned in spirit 
at the sight of Jack in the Green, and who thought it 
impious to taste plum porridge on Christmas day. At 
length a time came when the laughers began to look 
grave in their turn. The rigid, ungainly zealots, after 
having furnished much good sport during two gene- 
rations, rose up in arms, conquered, ruled, and, grimly 
smiling, trod down under their feet the whole crowd 
of mockers. The wounds inflicted by gay and pet- 
ulant malice were retaliated with the gloomy and im- 
placable malice peculiar to bigots who mistake their 
own rancour for virtue. The theatres were closed. 
The players were flogged. The press was put under 
the guardianship of austere licensers. The Muses 
were banished from their own favourite haunts. 
Cowley was ejected from Cambridge, and Crashaw 
from Oxford. The young candidate for academical 
honours was no longer required to write Ovidian 
epistles or Yirgilian pastorals, but was strictly inter- 
rogated by a synod of louring Supralapsarians as to 



124 LITERATURE AND LEARNING 

the day and hour when he experienced the new birth. 
Such a system was, of course, fruitful of hypocrites. 
Under sober clothing, and under visages composed to 
the expression of austerity, lay hid during several 
years the intense desire of license and of revenge. 
At length that desire was gratified. The Restoration 
emancipated thousands of minds from a yoke which 
had become insupportable. The old fight recom- 
menced, but with an animosity altogether new. It 
was now not a sportive combat, but a war to the death. 
The Roundhead had no better quarter to expect from 
those whom he had persecuted, than a cruel slave 
driver can expect from insurgent slaves, still bearing 
the marks of his collars and his scourges. 

The war between wit and Puritanism soon became a 
war between wit and morality. The hostility excited 
by a grotesque caricature of virtue did not spare vir- 
tue herself. Whatever the canting Roundhead had 
regarded with reverence was insulted. Whatever he 
had proscribed was favoured. Because he had been 
scrupulous about trifles, all scruples were treated with 
derision. Because he had covered his failings with 
the mask of devotion, men were encouraged to obtrude 
with Cynic impudence all their most scandalous vices 
on the public eye. Because he had punished illicit 
love with barbarous severity, virgin purity and conju- 
gal fidelity were to be made a jest. To that sanctimo- 
nious jargon, which was his shibboleth, was opposed 
another jargon not less absurd and much more odious, 



IN THE RE ION OF CHARLES II. 125 

As he. never opened his mouth except in scriptural 
phrase, the new breed of wits and fine gentlemen never 
opened their mouths without uttering ribaldry of which 
a porter would now be ashamed, and without calling 
on their Maker to curse them, sink them, confound 
them, blast them, and damn them. 

It is not strange, therefore, that our polite literature, 
when it revived with the revival of the old civil and 
ecclesiastical polity, should have been profoundly im- 
moral. A few eminent men, who belonged to an earlier 
and better age, were exempt from the general conta- 
gion. The verse of Waller still breathed the senti- 
ments which had animated a more chivalrous genera- 
tion. Cowley, distinguished at once as a loyalist and 
as a man of letters, raised his voice courageously against 
the immorality which disgraced both letters and loy- 
alty. A mightier spirit, unsubdued by pain, danger, 
poverty, obloquy and blindness, meditated, undisturbed 
by the obscene tumult which raged all around, a song 
so sublime and so holy that it would not have misbe- 
come the lips of those ethereal Virtues whom he saw, 
with that inner eye which no calamity could darken, 
flinging down on the jasper pavement their crowns of 
amaranth and gold. The vigorous and fertile genius 
of Butler, if it did not altogether escape the prevailing 
infection, took the disease in a mild form. But these 
were men whose minds had been trained in a world 
which had passed away. They gave place in no long- 
time to a younger generation of poets; and of that 
11* 



126 THE HUMAN VOICE. 

generation, from Dryden down to Durfey, the common 
characteristic was hard-hearted, shameless, swaggering 
licentiousness, at once inelegant and inhuman. The 
influence of these writers was doubtless noxious, yet 
less noxious than it would have been had they been 
less depraved. The poison which they administered 
was so strong, that it was, in no long time, rejected 
with nausea. None of them understood the dangerous 
art of associating images of unlawful pleasure with all 
that is endearing and ennobling. None of them was 
aware that a certain decorum is essential even to 
voluptuousness, that drapery may be more alluring 
than exposure, and that the imagination may be far 
more powerfully moved by delicate hints which impel 
it to exert itself than by gross descriptions which it 
takes in passively. 



THE HUMAN VOICE. 
BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 

Jfj GRIEVE to say it, but our people, I think, have 
j|2 not generally agreeable voices. The marrowy 
'organisms, with skins that shed water like the backs 
of ducks, with smooth surfaces neatly padded beneath, 
and velvet linings to their singing-pipes, are not so 
common among us as that other pattern of humanity 



THE, HUMAN VOICE. 127 

with angular outlines and plain surfaces, arid integu- 
ments, hair like the fibrous covering of a cocoa-nut in 
gloss and suppleness as well as colour, and voices at 
once thin and strenuous, — acidulous enough to produce 
effervescence with alkalis, and stridulous enough to 
sing duets with the katydids. I think our conver- 
sational soprano, as sometimes overheard in the cars, 
arising from a group of young persons, who may have 
taken the train at one of our great industrial centres, 
for instance,— -young persons of the female sex, we 
will say, who have bustled in full-dressed, engaged in 
loud strident speech, and who, after free discussion, 
have fixed on two or more double seats, which having 
secured, they proceed to eat apples and hand round 
daguerreotypes, — I say, I think the conversational 
soprano, heard under these circumstances, would not 
be among the allurements the old enemy would put in 
requisition, were he getting up a new temptation of 
St. Anthony. 

There are sweet voices among us, we all know, and 
voices not musical, it may be, to those who hear them 
for the first time, yet sweeter to us than any we shall 
hear until we listen to some warbling angel in the 
overture to that eternity of blissful harmonies we hope 
to enjoy. But why should I tell lies ? If my friends 
love me, it is because I try to tell the truth. I never 
heard but two voices in my life that frightened me by 
their sweetness. . . . They made me feel as if there 
might be constituted a creature with such a chord in 



128 THE HUMAN VOICE. 

her voice to some string in another's soul, that, if she 
but spoke, we would leave all and follow her, though 
it were into the jaws of Erebus. Our only chance to 
keep our wits is, that there are so few natural chords 
between others' voices and this string in our souls, 
and that those which at first may have jarred a little, 
by-and-by come into harmony with it. But I tell you 
this is no fiction. You may call the story of Ulysses 
and the Sirens a fable, but what will you say to Mario 
and the poor lady who followed him ? 

Whose were those two voices that bewitched me so ? 
They both belonged to German women. One was a 
chambermaid, not otherwise fascinating. The key of 
my room at a certain great hotel was missing, and this 
Teutonic maiden was summoned to give information 
respecting it. The simple soul was evidently not long 
from her mother-land, and spoke with sweet uncer- 
tainty of dialect. But to hear her wonder and lament 
and suggest, with soft, liquid inflexions, and low, sad 
murmurs, in tones as full of serious tenderness for the 
fate of the lost key as if it had been a child that had 
strayed from its mother, was so winning, that, had her 
features and figure been as delicious as her accents, — 
if she had looked like the marble Clytie, for in- 
stance, — why, all I can say is ... I was only going to 
say that I should have drowned myself. For Lake 
Erie was close by, and it is so much better to accept 
asphyxia, which takes only three minutes by the watch, 
than a mesalliance, that lasts fifty years to begin with, 



THE HUMAN VOICE. 129 

and then passes along down the line of descent; (break- 
ing ont in all manner of boorish manifestations of 
feature and manner, which, if men were only as short- 
lived as horses, could be readily traced back through 
the square-roots and the cube-roots of the family stem on 
which you have hung the armorial bearings of the De 
Champignons or the De la Morues, until one came to 
beings that ate with knives and said "Haow?") that 
no person of right feeling could have hesitated for a 
single moment. 

The second of the ravishing voices I have heard 
was, as I have said, that of another German woman. — 
I suppose I shall ruin myself by saying that such a 
voice could not have come from any Americanized 
human being. ... It had so much woman in it, — 
muliebrity, as well as femineity ; — no self-assertion, such 
as free suffrage introduces into every word and move- 
ment; large, vigorous nature, running back to those 
huge-limbed Germans of Tacitus, but subdued by the 
reverential training and tuned by the kindly culture 
of fifty generations. Sharp business habits, a lean 
soil, independence, enterprise, and east winds, are not 
the best things for the larynx. Still, you hear noble 
voices among us, — I have known families famous for 
them, — but ask the first person you meet a question, 
and ten to one there is a hard, sharp, metallic, matter- 
of-business clink in the accents of the answer, that 
produces the effect of one of those bells which small 
trades-people connect with their shop -doors, and which 



130 THE HUMAN VOICE. 

spring upon your ear with such vivacity, as you enter, 
that your first impulse is to retire at once from the 
precincts. 

Ah, but I must not forget that dear little child 

I saw and heard in a French hospital. Between two 
and three years old. Fell out of a chair and snapped 
both thigh-bones. Lying in bed, patient, gentle. 
Kough students round her, some in white aprons, 
looking fearfully business-like ; but the child placid, 
perfectly still. I spoke to her, and the blessed little 
creature answered me in a voice of such heavenly 
sweetness, with that reedy thrill in it which you have 
heard in the thrush's even-song, that I hear it at this 
moment, while I am writing, so many, many years 
afterwards. — C'est tout comme un serin, said the French 
student at my side. 

These are the voices which struck the key-note of 
my conceptions as to what the sounds we are to hear 
in heaven will be, if we shall enter through one of the 
twelve gates of pearl. There must be other things 
besides aerolites that wander from their own spheres 
to ours ; and when we speak of celestial sweetness or 
beauty, we may be nearer the literal truth than we 
dream. If mankind generally are the shipwrecked 
survivors of some pre-Adamitic cataclysm, set adrift 
in these little open boats of humanity to make one 
more trial to reach the shore, — as some grave theolo- 
gians have maintained, — if, in plain English, men are 
the ghosts of dead devils who have " died into life," 



MRS. BROWNING'S "AURORA LEIGH:' 131 

(to borrow an expression from Keats,) and walk the 
earth in a suit of living rags which lasts three or four 
score summers, — why, there must have been a few 
good spirits sent to keep them company, and these 
sweet voices I speak of must belong to them. 



EXTRACTS FROM MR S. B R WNTING'S 
"AURORA LEIGH." 



s» 



ENGLISH LANDSCAPE. 

jOT a grand nature. Not my chestnut woods 
Of Yallombrosa, cleaving by the spurs 
To the precipices. Not my headlong leaps 
Of waters, that cry Out for joy or fear 
In leaping through the palpitating pines, 
Like a white soul tossed out to eternity 
"With thrills of time upon it. Not indeed 
My multitudinous mountains, setting in 
The magic circle, with the mutual touch 
Electric, panting from their full deep hearts 
Beneath the influent heavens, and waiting for 
Communion and commission. Italy 
Is one thing, England one. 

On English ground 
You understand the letter ... ere the fall, 
How Adam lived in a garden. All the fields 
Are tied up fast with hedges, nosegay -like ; 



132 EXTRACTS FROM 

The hills are crumpled plains, — the plains, parterres,- 
The trees, round, woolly, ready to be clipped ; 
And if you seek for any wilderness, 
You find, at best, a park. A nature tamed 
And grown domestic like a barn-door fowl, 
"Which does not awe you with its claws and beak, 
Nor tempt you to an eyrie too high up, 
But which, in cackling, sets you thinking of 
Your eggs to-morrow at breakfast, in the pause 
Of finer meditation. 

Rather say 
A sweet familiar nature, stealing in 
As a dog might, or child, to touch your hand 
Or pluck your gown, and humbly mind you so 
Of presence and affection, excellent 
For inner uses, from the things without. 

LIFE. 

Life, 
How oft we throw it off and think, — "Enough, 
Enough of life in so much ! — here's a cause 
For rupture ; — herein we must break with Life, 
Or be ourselves unworthy ; here we are wronged, 
Maimed, spoiled for aspiration : farewell Life ! " 
— And so, as froward babes, we hide our eyes 
And think all ended. — Then, Life calls to us 
In some transformed, apocryphal, new voice, 
Above us, or below us, or around . . . 



MRS. BROWNING'S "AURORA LEIGH." 133 

Perhaps we name it Nature's voice, or Love's, 
Tricking ourselves, because we are more ashamed 
To own our compensations than our griefs : 
Still, Life's voice ! — still, we make our peace with Life. 

THE SOUL'S INTIMATIONS OF IMMOR- 
TALITY. 

The cygnet finds the water; but the man 
Is born in ignorance of his element, 
And feels out blind at first, disorganized 
By sin in the blood, — his spirit-insight dulled 
And crossed by his sensations. Presently 
We feel it quicken in the dark sometimes; 
Then mark, be reverent, be obedient, — 
For those dumb motions of imperfect life 
Are oracles of vital Deity 
Attesting the Hereafter. Let who says 
"The soul's a clean white paper," rather say, 
A palimpsest, a prophet's holograph 
Defiled, erased and covered by a monk's, — 
The apocalypse, by a Longus! poring on 
Which obscure text, we may discern perhaps 
Some fair, fine trace of what was written once, 
Some offstroke of an Alpha and Omega 
Expressing the old scripture. 
12 



134 EXTRACTS FROM 



LONDON 



[Aurora Leigh, after the death of her aunt, and her rejection 
of her cousin Romney's offer of marriage, goes to London to 
realize her great ideal of the poet-artist. In the following passage 
she speaks of London as a source of poetic inspiration:] 

When Komney Leigh and I had parted thus, 

I took a chamber up three flights of stairs 

Not far from being as steep as some larks climb, 

And, in a certain house in Kensington, 

Three years I lived and worked. Get leave to work 

In this world, — 'tis the best you get at all ; 

For God, in cursing, gives us better gifts 

Than men in benediction. God says, " sweat 

For foreheads;" men say "crowns;" and so we are 

crowned, — 
Ay, gashed by some tormenting circle of steel 
Which snaps with a secret spring. Get work; get 

work; 
Be sure 'tis better than what you work to get. 

So, happy and unafraid of solitude, 

I worked the short days out, — and watched the sun 

On lurid morns or monstrous afternoons, 

Like some Druidic idol's fiery brass, 

With fixed unflickering outline of dead heat, 

In which the blood of wretches pent inside 

Seemed oozing forth to incarnadine the air, — ■ 



MRS. BROWNING'S "AURORA LEIGH." 135 

Push out through fog with his dilated disk 

And startle the slant roofs and chimney-pots 

"With splashes of fierce colour. Or I saw 

Pog only, the great tawny weltering fog, 

Involve the passive city, strangle it 

Alive, and draw it off into the void, 

Spires, bridges, streets, and squares, as if a sponge 

Had wiped out London, — or as noon and night 

Had clapped together and utterly struck out 

The intermediate time, undoing themselves 

In the act. Your city poets see such things, 

Not despicable. Mountains of the South, 

When, drunk and mad with elemental wines, 

They rend the seamless mist and stand up bare, 

Make fewer singers, haply. No one sings, 

Descending Sinai ; on Parnassus mount, 

You take a mule to climb, and not a muse, 

Except in fable and figure : forests chant 

Their anthems to themselves, and leave you dumb. 

But sit in London, at the day's decline, 

And view the city perish in the mist 

Like Pharaoh's armaments in the deep Eed Sea, — 

The chariots, horsemen, footmen, all the host, 

Sucked down and choked to silence — then, surprised 

By a sudden sense of vision and of tune, 

You feel as conquerors though you did not fight, 

And you and Israel's other singing girls, 

Ay, Miriam with them, sing the song you choose. 



136 LONDON. 

[It is interesting to compare with the preceding passage from 
"Aurora Leigh," what a great German poet, Heinrich Heine, 
says of London, in the same relation. The following passage 
is from his Reisebilder, {Pictures of Travel,) as translated by 
Charles G. Leland:] 

I have seen the greatest wonder which the world 
can show to the astonished spirit ; I have seen it and 
am still astonished — and still there remains fixed in 
my memory the stone forest of houses, and amid them 
the rushing stream of faces of living men with all 
their motley passions, all their terrible impulses of 
love, of hunger, and of hatred — I mean London. Send 
a philosopher to London, but, for your life, no poet! 
Send a philosopher there, and stand him at the corner 
of Cheapside, where he will learn more than from all 
the books of the last Leipsic fair ; and as the billows 
of human life roar around him, so will a sea of new 
thoughts rise before him, and the Eternal Spirit which 
moves upon the face of the waters will breathe upon 
him ; the most hidden secrets of social harmony will 
be suddenly revealed to him ; he will hear the pulse 
of the world beat audibly, and see it visibly ; for, if 
London is the right hand of the world — its active, 
mighty right hand — then we may regard the route 
which leads from the Exchange to Downing street as 
the world's pyloric artery. But never send a poet to 
London ! This downright earnestness of all things, this 
colossal uniformity, this machine-like movement, this 
troubled spirit in pleasure itself, this exaggerated 



SONG OF DEBORAH AND BARAK. 137 

London, smothers the imagination and rends the heart. 
And should you ever send a Grerman poet thither — a 
dreamer, who stares at everything, even a ragged 
beggar woman, or the shining wares of a goldsmith's 
shop — why then, at least, he will find things going 
right badly with him. 



THE SONG OF DEBORAH AND BARAK. 
BOOK OF JUDGES, CHAP. V. 

figf HEN" sang Deborah and Barak the son of Abinoam 
\$?) on that day, saying, 

Praise ye the Lord for the avenging of Israel, when 
the people willingly offered themselves. Hear, O ye 
kings ; give ear, ye princes ; I, even I, will sing unto 
the Lord ; I will sing praise to the Lord Grod of Israel. 
Lord, when thou wentest out of Seir, when thou 
marchedest out of the field of Edom, the earth trem- 
bled, and the heavens dropped, the clouds also dropped 
water. The mountains melted from before the Lord, 
even that Sinai from before the Lord God of Israel. 

In the days of Shamgar the son of Anath, in the 
days of Jael, the highways were unoccupied, and the 
travellers walked through by-ways. The inhabitants 
of the villages ceased, they ceased in Israel, until that 
I Deborah arose, that I arose a mother in Israel. They 

chose new gods ; then was war in the gates : was there 
12* 



138 SONG OF DEBORAH AND BARAK. 

a shield or spear seen among forty thousand in Israel ? 
My heart is toward the governors of Israel, that offered 
themselves willingly among the people. Bless ye the 
Lord. 

Speak ; ye that ride on white asses, ye that sit in 
judgment, and walk by the way. They that are deli- 
vered from the noise of archers in the places of draw- 
ing water, there shall they rehearse the righteous acts 
of the Lord, even the righteous acts toward the inha- 
bitants of his villages in Israel : then shall the people 
of the Lord go down to the gates. 

Awake, awake, Deborah: awake, awake, utter a 
song: arise, Barak, and lead thy captivity captive, 
thoa son of Abinoam. 

Then he made him that remaineth have dominion 
over the nobles among the people : the Lord made me 
have dominion over the mighty. Out of Ephraim was 
there a root of them against Amalek ; after thee, Ben- 
jamin, among thy people ; out of Machir came down 
governors, and out of Zebulun they that handle the 
pen of the writer. And the princes of Issachar were 
with Deborah ; even Issachar, and also Barak : he was 
sent on foot into the valley. For the divisions of 
Reuben there were great thoughts of heart. 

Why abodest thou among the sheepfolds, to hear the 
bleatings of the flocks ? For the divisions of Reuben 
there were great searchings of heart. Gilead abode 
beyond Jordan : and why did Dan remain in ships ? 
Asher continued on the sea shore, and abode in his 



SONG OF DEBORAH AND BARAK. 139 

creeks. Zebulun and Naphtali were a people that 
jeoparded their lives unto the death in the high places 
of the field. The kings came and fought ; then fought 
the kings of Canaan in Taanach by the waters of 
Megiddo ; they took no gain of money. They fought 
from heaven ; the stars in their courses fought against 
Sisera. The river of Kishon swept them away, that 
ancient river, the river Kishon. O my soul, thou hast 
trodden down strength. Then were the horsehoofs 
broken by the means of the prancings, the prancings 
of their mighty ones. Curse ye Meroz, said the angel 
of the Lord, curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof; 
because they came not to the help of the Lord, to the 
help of the Lord against the mighty. 

Blessed above women shall Jael the wife of Heber 
the Kenite be ; blessed shall she be above women in 
the tent. He asked water, and she gave him milk ; 
she brought forth butter in a lordly dish. She put 
her hand to the nail, and her right hand to the work- 
men's hammer ; and with the hammer she smote Sisera, 
she smote off his head, when she had pierced and 
stricken through his temples. At her feet he bowed, 
he fell, he lay down : at her feet he bowed, he fell : 
where he bowed, there he fell down dead. 

The mother of Sisera looked out at a window, and 
cried through the lattice, Why is his chariot so long 
in coming ? why tarry the wheels of his chariots ? Her 
wise ladies answered her, yea, she returned answer to 
herself, Have they not sped ? have they not divided 



140 INCIDENT AT BR UGES. 

the prey ; to every man a damsel or two ; to Sisera a 
prey of divers colours, a prey of divers colours of 
needlework, of divers colours of needlework on both 
sides, meet for the necks of them that take the spoil ? 
So let all thine enemies perish, Lord : but let them 
that love him be as the sun when he goeth forth in 
his might. — And the land had rest forty years. 



INCIDENT AT BRUGES. 
BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 

fN Bruges town is many a street 
"Whence busy life hath fled ; 
Where, without hurry, noiseless feet 

The grass-grown pavement tread. 
There heard we, halting in the shade 

Flung from a convent-tower, 
A harp that tuneful prelude made 
To a voice of thrilling power. 

The measure, simple truth to tell, 

Was fit for some gay throng^ 
Though from the same grim turret fell 

The shadow and the song. 
When silent were both voice and chords, 

The strain seemed doubly dear, 
Yet sad as sweet, — for English words 

Had fallen upon the ear. 



INCIDENT A T BR UGES. 141 

It was a breezy hour of eve ; 

And pinnacle and spire 
Quivered and seemed almost to heave, 

Clothed with innocuous fire; 
But, where we stood, the setting sun 

Showed little of his state ; 
And, if the glory reached the Nun; 

'Twas through an iron grate. 

Not always is the heart unwise, 

Nor pity idly born, 
If even a passing stranger sighs 

For them who do not mourn. 
Sad is thy doom, self-solaced dove, 

Captive, whoe'er thou be! 
Oh! what is beauty, what is love, 

And opening life to thee? 

Such feeling pressed upon my soul, 

A feeling sanctified 
By one soft trickling tear that stole 

From the Maiden at my side; 
Less tribute could she pay than this, 

Borne gaily o'er the sea, 
Fresh from the beauty and the bliss 

Of English Liberty? 



142 MONK FELIX. 



MONK FELIX. 
BY HENEY WADSWOETH LONGFELLOW. 

iNB morning, all alone, 
Out of his convent of gray stone, 
Into the forest older, darker, grayer, 
His lips moving as if in prayer, 
His head sunken upon his breast 
As in a dream of rest, 
Walked the Monk Felix. All about, 
The broad, sweet sunshine lay without, 
Filling the summer air ; 
And within the woodlands as he trod, 
The twilight was like the Truce of God 
With worldly woe and care ; 
Under him lay the golden moss; 
And above him the boughs of hemlock-trees 
Waved, and made the sign of the cross, 
And whispered their Benedicites ; 
And from the ground 
Eose an odor sweet and fragrant 
Of the wild-flowers and the vagrant 
Yines that wandered, 
Seeking the sunshine, round and round. 
These he heeded not, but pondered 



MONK FELIX. 143 

On the volume in his hand ; 

A volume of Saint Augustine, 

Wherein he read of the unseen 

Splendors of Grod's great town 

In the unknown land, 

And, with his eyes cast down 

In humility, he said: 

"I believe, God, 

"What herein I have read, 

But, alas! I do not understand!" 

And lo! he heard 

The sudden singing of a bird, 

A snow-white bird, that from a cloud 

Dropped down, 

And among the branches brown 

Sat singing 

So sweet, and clear, and loud, 

It seemed a thousand harp-strings ringing. 

And the Monk Felix closed his book, 

And long, long, 

With rapturous look, 

He listened to the song, 

And hardly breathed or stirred, 

Until he saw, as in a vision, 

The land Elysian, 

And in the heavenly city heard 

Angelic feet 

Fall on the golden flagging of the street. 



144 MONK FELIX. 

And he would fain 

Have caught the wondrous bird, 

But strove in vain; 

For it flew away ; away, 

Far over hill and dell, 

And instead of its sweet singing 

He heard the convent bell 

Suddenly in the silence ringing 

For the service of noonday. 

And he retraced 

His pathway homeward sadly and in haste. 

In the convent there was a change! 
He looked for each well-known face, 
But the faces were new and strange; 
New figures sat in the oaken stalls, 
New voices chaunted in the choir; 
Yet the place was the same place, 
The same dusky walls 
Of cold, gray stone, 
The same cloisters and belfry and spire. 

A stranger and alone 
Among that brotherhood 
The Monk Felix stood. 
"Forty years," said a Friar, 
"Have I been Prior 
Of this convent in the wood, 



. 



MONK FELIX. 145 

But for that space 

Never have I beheld thy face!" 

The heart of the Monk Felix fell : 

And he answered, with submissive tone, 

"This morning, after the hour of Prime, 

I left my cell, 

And wandered forth alone, 

Listening all the time 

To the melodious singing 

Of a beautiful white bird, 

Until I heard 

The bells of the convent ringing 

Noon from their noisy towers. 

It was as if I dreamed; 

For what to me had seemed 

Moments only, had been hours!" 

"Years!" said a voice close by. 

It was an aged Monk who spoke, 

From a bench of oak 

Fastened against the wall ; — 

He was the oldest Monk of all. 

For a whole century 

Had he been there, 

Serving God in prayer, 

The meekest and humblest of his creatures. 

He remembered well the features 

Of Felix, and he said, 

18 



146 MONK FELIX. 

Speaking distinct and slow: 

"One hundred years ago, 

When I was a novice in this place, 

There was here a Monk, full of God's grace, 

"Who bore the name 

Of Felix, and this man must be the same." 

And straightway 

They brought forth to the light of day 

A volume old and brown, 

A huge tome, bound 

In brass and wild-boar's hide, 

Wherein were written down 

The names of all who had died 

In the convent, since it was edified. 

And there they found, 

Just as the old Monk said, 

That on a certain day and date, 

One hundred years before, 

Had gone forth from the convent gate 

The Monk Felix, and never more 

Had entered that sacred door. 

He had been counted among the dead! 

And they knew, at last, 

That, such had been the power 

Of that celestial and immortal song, 

A hundred years had passed, 

And had not seemed so long 

As a single hour! 






THE PAST AND PRESENT. 147 



TEE TENDENCY OF NATIONS TO OVER- 
ESTIMATE THE PAST, AND DEPRECIATE 
THE PRESENT. < 

BY THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 

|N spite of evidence, many will still imagine to 
themselves the England of the Stuarts as a more 
pleasant country than the England in which we live. 
It may at first sight seem strange that society, while 
constantly moving forward with eager speed, should 
be constantly looking backward with tender regret. 
But these two propensities, inconsistent as they may 
appear, can easily be resolved into the same principle. 
Both spring from our impatience of the state in which 
we actually are. That impatience, while it stimulates 
us to surpass preceding generations, disposes us to 
overrate their happiness. It is, in some sense, un- 
reasonable and ungrateful in us to be constantly dis- 
contented with a condition which is constantly im- 
proving. But, in truth, there is constant improvement 
precisely because there is constant discontent. If we 
were perfectly satisfied with the present, we should 
cease to contrive, to labour, and to save with a view 
to the future. And it is natural that, being dissatis- 
fied with the present, we should form a too favourable 
estimate of the past. 



148 THE PAST AND PRESENT. 

In truth, we are under a deception similar to that 
which misleads the traveller in the Arabian desert. 
Beneath the caravan all is dry and bare : but far in 
advance, and far in the rear, is the semblance of re- 
freshing waters. The pilgrims hasten forward, and 
find nothing but sand, where, an hour before, they 
had seen a lake. They turn their eyes and see a lake, 
where, an hour before, they were toiling through 
sand. A similar illusion seems to haunt nations 
through every stage of the long progress from poverty 
and barbarism to the highest degrees of opulence and 
civilization. But, if we resolutely chase the mirage 
backward, we shall find it recede before us into the 
regions of fabulous antiquity. It is now the fashion 
to place the golden age of England in times when 
noblemen were destitute of comforts, the want of which 
would be intolerable to a modern footman, when farm- 
ers and shopkeepers breakfasted on loaves, the very 
sight of which would raise a riot in a modern work- 
house, when men died faster in the purest country air 
than they now die in the most pestilential lanes of our 
towns, and when men died faster in the lanes of our 
towns than they now die on the coast of Guiana. "We 
too shall, in our turn, be outstripped, and in our turn 
be envied. It may well be, in the twentieth century, 
that the peasant of Dorsetshire may think himself 
miserably paid with fifteen shillings a week ; that the 
carpenter at Greenwich may receive ten shillings a 
dav ; that labouring men may be as little used to dine 



SONNETS. 149 

without meat as they now are to eat rye bread ; that 
sanitary police and medical discoveries may have 
added several more years to the average length of 
human life; that numerous comforts and luxuries 
which are now unknown ; or confined to a few, may be 
within the reach of every diligent and thrifty work- 
ing man. And yet it may then be the mode to assert 
that the increase of wealth and the progress of science 
have benefited the few at the expense of the many, and 
to talk of the reign of Queen Victoria as the time when 
England was truly merry England, when all classes 
were bound together by brotherly sympathy, when the 
rich did not grind the faces of the poor, and when the 
poor did not envy the splendour of the rich. 



SCORN NOT THE SONNET. 
BY WILLIAM WOEDSWOKTH. 

§COKN" not the Sonnet ; critic, you have frowned, 
Mindless of its just honours ; with this key 
Shakspeare unlocked his heart ; the melody 
Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound ; 
A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound ; 
Camoens soothed with it an exile's grief; 
The Sonnet glittered a gay myrtle leaf 
Amid the cypress with which Dante crowned 

13* 



150 SONNETS. 

His visionary brow ; a glow-worm lamp, 
It cheered mild Spenser, called from Faery-land 

To struggle through dark ways ; and, when a damp 
Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand 

The thing became a trumpet, whence he blew 

Soul-animating strains — alas, too few ! 



THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US. 
BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 

HE world is too much with us ; late and soon, 
Getting and spending we lay waste our powers * r 

Little we see in nature that is ours ; 
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon ! 
This sea that bares her bosom to the moon, 

The winds that will be howling at all hours, 

And are up-gather'd now like sleeping flowers ; 
For this, for every thing, we are out of tune ; 

It moves us not. Great God ! I'd rather be 
A pagan suckled in a creed outworn ; 

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, 
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; 

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea, 
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. 



SONNETS. 151 

MILTON. 

BY WILLIAM WOEDSWOETH. 

ILTON ! thou shouldst be living at this hour ; 
England hath need of thee ; she is a fen 

Of stagnant waters ; altar, sword, and pen, 
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower, 
Have forfeited their ancient English dower 

Of inward happiness. We are selfish men; 

Oh ! raise us up, return to us again ; 
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power. 

Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart; 
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea; 
Pure as the naked heavens — majestic, free, 
So didst thou travel on life's common way 

In cheerful godliness ; and yet thy heart 
The lowliest duties on herself did lay. 



SILENCE. 
BY THOMAS HOOD. 

£^f HEEE is a silence where hath been no sound, 

Xj?) There is a silence where no sound may be, 

In the cold grave — under the deep, deep sea, 

Or in wide desert where no life is found, 

Which hath been mute, and still must sleep profound ; 

No voice is hush'd — no life treads silently, 

But clouds and cloudy shadows wander free. 



152 SONNETS. 

That never spoke, over the idle ground : 
But in green ruins, in the desolate walls 
Of antique palaces, where man hath been, 
Though the dun fox, or wild hyaena, calls, 
And owls, that flit continually between, 
Shriek to the echo, and the low winds moan, 
There the true Silence is, self-conscious and alone. 



FANCY IN NUBIBUS; OR, THE POET IN 
THE CLOUDS. 

BY SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 

H! it is pleasant, with a heart at ease, 
Just after sunset, or by moonlight skies, 
To make the shifting clouds be what you please, 

Or let the easily persuaded eyes 
Own each quaint likeness issuing from the mould 

Of a friend's fancy ; or, with head bent low 
And cheek aslant, see rivers flow of gold 

'Twixt crimson banks; and then, a traveller, go 
From mount to mount through Cloudland, gorgeous 
land ! 

Or, listening to the tide, with closed sight, 
Be that blind bard who, on the Chian strand, 

By those deep sounds possessed with inward light, 

Beheld the Iliad and the Odyssey 

Eise to the swelling of the voiceful sea. 



QOD'S POWER AND PROVIDENCE. 153 



GOD'S POWER AND PROVIDENCE ILL US- 
TRATED IN THE ANIMAL KINGDOM, 

BOOK OF JOB, CHAP. XXXIX. 

NOWEST thou the time when the wild goats of 
the rock bring forth ? or canst thou mark when 
the hinds do calve ? Canst thou number the months 
that they fulfil ? or knowest thou the time when they 
bring forth ? They bow themselves, they bring forth 
their young ones, they cast out their sorrows. Their 
young ones are in good liking, they grow up with 
corn ; they go forth, and return not unto them. 

Who hath sent out the wild ass free ? or who hath 
loosed the bands of the wild ass ? "Whose house I have 
made the wilderness, and the barren land his dwell- 
ings. He scorneth the multitude of the city, neither 
regard eth he the crying of the driver. The range of 
the mountains is his pasture, and he searcheth after 
every green thing. 

Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide 
by thy crib ? Canst thou bind the unicorn with his 
band in the furrow ? or will he harrow the valleys 
after thee ? Wilt thou trust him, because his strength 
is great ? or wilt thou leave thy labour to him ? Wilt 
thou believe him, that he will bring home thy seed, 
and gather it into thy barn? 



154 GOD'S POWER AND PROVIDENCE. 

Gavest thou the goodly wings unto the peacocks ? 
or wings and feathers unto the ostrich ? Which leaveth 
her eggs in the earth, and warmeth them in the dust, 
and forgetteth that the foot may crush them, or that 
the wild beast may break them. She is hardened 
against her young ones, as though they were not hers : 
her labour is in vain without fear ; because God has 
deprived her of wisdom, neither has he imparted to 
her understanding. "What time she lifteth up herself 
on high, she scorneth the horse and his rider. 

Hast thou given the horse strength? hast thou 
clothed his neck with thunder ? Canst thou make him 
afraid as a grasshopper ? the glory of his nostrils is 
terrible. He paweth in the valley, and rejoiceth in 
his strength: he goeth on to meet the armed men. 
He mocketh at fear, and is not affrighted; neither 
turneth he back from the sword. The quiver rattleth 
against him, the glittering spear and the shield. He 
swalloweth the ground with fierceness and rage: nei- 
ther believeth he that it is the sound of the trumpet. 
He saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha ! and he smelleth 
the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains, and the 
shouting. 

Doth the hawk fly by thy wisdom, and stretch her 
wings toward the South ? Doth the eagle mount up 
at thy command, and make her nest on high ? She 
dwelleth and abideth on the rock, upon the crag of 
the rock, and the strong place. From thence she 



BELSHAZZAR'S FEAST. 155 

seeketh the prey, and her eyes behold afar off. Her 

young ones also suck up blood : and where the slain 
are, there is she. 



BELSHAZZAR'S FEAST. 
BOOK OF DANIEL, CHAP, V. 

ELSHAZZAK, the king, made a great feast to a 
thousand of his lords, and drank wine before 
the thousand. Belshazzar, while he tasted the wine, 
commanded to bring the golden and silver vessels 
which his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken out of 
the temple which was in Jerusalem, that the king and 
his princes, his wives and his concubines, might drink 
therein. Then they brought the golden vessels that 
were taken out of the temple of the house of God 
which was at Jerusalem ; and the king and his princes, 
his wives and his concubines, drank in them. They 
drank wine, and praised the gods of gold, and of silver, 
of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone. 

In the same hour came forth fingers of a man's 
hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon the 
plaster of the wall of the king's palace ; and the king 
saw the part of the hand that wrote. Then the king's 
countenance was changed, and his thoughts troubled 
him, so that the joints of his loins were loosed, and 
his knees smote one against another. The king cried 



156 BELSHAZZAR'S FEAST. 

aloud to bring in the astrologers, the Chaldeans, and 
the soothsayers. And the king spake, and said to the 
wise men of Babylon, Whosoever shall read this 
writing, and show me the interpretation thereof, shall 
be clothed with scarlet, and have a chain of gold about 
his neck, and shall be the third ruler in the kingdom. 
Then came in all the king's wise men ; but they could 
not read the writing, nor make known to the king the 
interpretation thereof. Then was king Belshazzar 
greatly troubled, and his countenance was changed in 
him, and his lords were astonished. 

Now the queen, by reason of the words of the king 
and his lords, came into the banquet house : and the 
queen spake and said, king, live for ever : let not 
thy thoughts trouble thee, nor let thy countenance be 
changed : There is a man in thy kingdom, in whom is 
the spirit of the holy gods ; and in the days of thy 
father, light and understanding and wisdom, like the 
wisdom of the gods, was found in him ; whom the 
king Nebuchadnezzar, thy father, the king, I say, thy 
father, made master of the magicians, astrologers, 
Chaldeans, and soothsayers ; forasmuch as an excellent 
spirit, and knowledge, and understanding, interpreting 
of dreams, and showing of hard sentences, and dis- 
solving of doubts, were found in the same Daniel, 
whom the king named Belteshazzar : now let Daniel 
be called, and he will show the interpretation. Then 
was Daniel brought in before the king. And the 
king spake and said unto Daniel, Art thou that Daniel, 



BELSHAZZAR'S FEAST. 15T 

which art of the children of the captivity of Judah, 
whom the king my father brought out of Jewry ? I 
have even heard of thee, that the spirit of the gods is 
in thee, and that light and understanding and excel- 
lent wisdom is found in thee. And now the wise men, 
the astrologers, have been brought in before me, that 
they should read this writing, and make known unto 
me the interpretation thereof; but they could not show 
the interpretation of the thing : And I have heard of 
thee, that thou canst make interpretations, and dis- 
solve doubts : now if thou canst read the writing, and 
make known to me the interpretation thereof, thou 
shalt be clothed with scarlet, and have a chain of gold 
about thy neck, and shalt be the third ruler in the 
kingdom. 

Then Daniel, answered and said before the king, 
Let thy gifts be to thyself, and give thy rewards to 
another ; yet I will read the writing unto the king, 
and make known to him the interpretation. O thou 
king, the most high God gave Nebuchadnezzar thy 
father a kingdom, and majesty, and glory, and honour : 
And for the majesty that he gave him, all people, 
nations, and languages, trembled and feared before 
him : whom he would he slew ; and whom he would 
he kept alive ; and whom he would he set up ; and 
whom he would he put down. But when his heart 
was lifted up, and his mind hardened in pride, he was 
deposed from his kingly throne, and they took his 

glory from him : and he was driven from the sons of 
14 



158 BELSHAZZAR' S FEAST. 

men ; and his heart was made like the beasts ; and his 
dwelling was with the wild asses : they fed him with 
grass like oxen, and his body was wet with the dew 
of heaven ; till he knew that the most high God ruled 
in the kingdom of men, and that he appointeth over 
it whomsoever he will. And thou, his son, Bel- 
shazzar, hast not humbled thine heart, though thou 
knewest all this ; but hast lifted up thyself against the 
Lord of heaven : and they have brought the vessels 
of his house before thee, and thou and thy lords, thy 
wives and thy concubines, have drunk wine in them ; 
and thou hast praised the gods of silver, and gold, of 
brass, iron, wood, and stone, which see not, nor hear, 
nor know ; and the God in whose hand thy breath is, 
and whose are all thy ways, hast thou not glorified : 
Then was the part of the hand sent from him ; and 
this writing was written. 

And this is the writing that was written, MENE, 
MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN. This is the interpre- 
tation of the thing : MENE ; God hath numbered thy 
kingdom, and finished it. TEKEL ; thou art weighed 
in the balances, and art found wanting. PERES ; thy 
kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Per- 
sians. Then commanded Belshazzar, and they clothed 
Daniel with scarlet, and put a chain of gold about his 
neck, and made a proclamation concerning him, that 
he should be the third ruler in the kingdom. 

In that night was Belshazzar, the King of the Chal- 
deans, slain. And Darius, the Median, took the king- 
dom, being about threescore and two years old. 



RURAL LIFE IN SWEDEN, 159 



BUBAL LIFE IN SWEDEN. 
BY HENRY W. LONGFELLOW. 

(^fHEKE is something patriarchal still lingering 
^} about rural life in Sweden, which renders it a 
fit theme for song. Almost primeval simplicity reigns 
over that Northern land, — almost primeval solitude 
and stillness. You pass out from the gate of the city, 
and, as if by magic, the scene changes to a wild, wood- 
land landscape. Around you are forests of fir. Over- 
head hang the long, fan-like branches, trailing with 
moss, and heavy with red and blue cones. Under foot 
is a carpet of yellow leaves ; and the air is warm and 
balmy. On a wooden bridge you cross a little silver 
stream ; and anon come forth into a pleasant and sunny 
land of farms. Wooden fences divide the adjoining 
fields. Across the road are gates, which are opened 
by troops of children. The peasants take off their 
hats as you pass ; you sneeze, and they cry, " God bless 
you." The houses in the villages and smaller towns 
are all built of hewn timber, and for the most part 
painted red. The floors of the taverns are strewn with 
the fragrant tips of fir boughs. In many villages there 
are no taverns, and the peasants take turns in receiving 
travellers. The thrifty housewife shows you into the 
best chamber, the walls of which are hung round with 



100 RURAL LIFE IN SWEDEN. 

rude pictures from the Bible ; and brings you her 
heavy silver spoons, — an heirloom, — to dip the curdled 
milk from the pan. You have oaten cakes baked 
some months before; or bread with anise-seed and 
coriander in it, or, perhaps, a little pine bark. 

Meanwhile the sturdy husband has brought his 
horses from the plough, and harnessed them to your 
carriage. Solitary travellers come and go in uncouth 
one-horse chaises. Most of them have pipes in their 
mouths, and hanging around their necks in front, a 
leather wallet, in which they cany tobacco, and the 
great bank-notes of the country, as large as your two 
hands. You meet, also, groups of Dalekarlian peasant 
women, travelling homeward, or townward, in pursuit 
of work. They walk barefoot, carrying in their hands 
their shoes, which have high heels under the hollow 
of the foot, and soles of birch bark. 

Frequent, too, are the village churches, standing by 
the roadside, each in its own little garden of Gethse- 
mane. In the parish register great events are doubtless 
recorded. Some old king was christened or buried in 
that church ; and a little sexton, with a rusty key, 
shows you the baptismal font, or the coffin. In the 
churchyard are a few flowers, and much green grass ; 
and daily the shadow of the church spire, with its 
long, tapering finger, counts the tombs, representing a 
dial-plate of human life, on which the hours and 
minutes are the graves of men. The stones are flat, 
and large, and low, and perhaps sunken, like the roofs 



RURAL LIFE IN SWEDEN. 161 

of old houses. On some are armorial bearings; on 
others, only the initials of the poor tenants, with a 
date, as on the roofs of Dutch cottages. They all sleep 
with their heads to the westward. Each held a lighted 
taper in his hand when he died ; and in his coffin were 
placed his little heart-treasures, and a piece of money 
for his last journey. Babes that came lifeless into the 
world were carried in the arms of gray-haired old men 
to the only cradle they ever slept in ; and in the shroud 
of the dead mother were laid the little garments of the 
child, that lived and died in her bosom. And over 
this scene the village pastor looks from his window in 
the stillness of midnight, and says in his heart, " How 
quietly they rest, all the departed ! " 

Near the churchyard gate stands a poor-box, fast- 
ened to a post by iron bands, and secured by a pad- 
lock, with a sloping wooden roof to keep off the rain. 
If it be Sunday, the peasants sit on the church steps 
and con their psalm-books. Others are coming down 
the road with their beloved pastor, who talks to them 
of holy things from beneath his broad-brimmed hat. 
He speaks of fields and harvests, and of the parable 
of the sower, that went forth to sow. He leads them 
to the good Shepherd, and to the pleasant pastures of 
the spirit-land. He is their patriarch, and, like Mel- 
chizedek, both priest and king, though he has no 
other throne than the church - pulpit. The women 
carry psalm-books in their hands, wrapped in silk 
handkerchiefs, and listen devoutly to the good man's 

14* 



162 RURAL LIFE IX SWEDEN. 

words. But the young men, like Gallio, care for 
none of these things. They are busy counting the 
plaits in the kirtles of the peasant girls, their number 
being an indication of the wearer's wealth. It may 
end in a wedding. 

I will endeavour to describe a village wedding in 
Sweden. It shall be in summer time, that there may 
be flowers, and in a southern province, that the bride 
may be fair. The early song of the lark and of chan- 
ticleer are mingling in the clear morning air, and the 
sun, the heavenly bridegroom with golden locks, arises 
in the east, just as our earthly bridegroom with yellow 
hair, arises in the south. In the yard there is a sound 
of voices and tramping of hoofs, and horses are led 
forth and saddled. The steed that is to bear the bride- 
groom has a bunch of flowers upon his forehead, and 
a garland of corn-flowers around his neck. Friends 
from the neighbouring farms come riding in, their 
blue cloaks streaming to the wind ; and finally the 
happy bridegroom, with a whip in his hand, and a 
monstrous nosegay in the breast of his black jacket, 
comes forth from his chamber ; and then to horse and 
away, towards the village w r here the bride already sits 
and waits. 

Foremost rides the spokesman, followed by some 
'half dozen village musicians. JSText comes the bride- 
groom between his two groomsmen, and then forty or 
fifty friends and wedding guests, half of them perhaps 
with pistols and guns in their hands. A kind of bag- 



RURAL LIFE IN SWEDEN. 163 

gage- wagon brings up the rear, laden with food and 
drink for these merry pilgrims. At the entrance of 
every village stands a triumphal arch, adorned with 
flowers and ribbons and evergreens ; and as they pass 
beneath it, the wedding guests fire a salute, and the 
whole procession stops. And straight from every 
pocket flies a black -jack, rilled with punch or brandy. 
It is passed from hand to hand among the crowd; 
provisions are brought from the wagon, and after eat- 
ing and drinking and hurrahing, the procession moves 
forward again, and at length draws near the house of 
the bride. Four heralds ride forward to announce 
that a knight and his attendants are in the neighbour- 
ing forest, and pray for hospitality. " How many are 
you ? " asks the bride's father. "At least three hun- 
dred," is the answer; and to this the host replies, 
" Yes ; were you seven times as many, you should all 
be welcome ; and in token thereof receive this cup." 
Whereupon each herald receives a can of ale; and 
soon after the whole jovial company comes storming 
into the farmer's yard, and, riding round the May-pole, 
which stands in the centre, alights amid a grand salute 
and flourish of music. 

In the hall sits the bride, with a crown upon her 
head and a tear in her eye, like the Yirgin Mary in 
old church paintings. She is dressed in a red boddice 
and kirtle, with loose linen sleeves. There is a gilded 
belt around her waist ; and around her neck strings 
of golden beads, and a golden chain. On the crown 



164 RURAL LIFE IN SWEDEN. 

rests a wreath of wild roses, and below it another of 
cypress. Loose over her shoulders falls her flaxen 
hair ; and her blue innocent eyes are fixed upon the 
ground. thou good soul ! thou hast hard hands, but 
a soft heart ! Thou art poor. The very ornaments 
thou wearest are not thine. They have been hired for 
this great day. Yet art thou rich ; rich in health, rich 
in hope, rich in thy first, young, fervent love. The 
blessing of heaven be upon thee ! So thinks the parish 
priest, as he joins together the hands of bride and 
bridegroom, saying in deep solemn tones, — "I give 
thee in marriage this damsel, to be thy wedded wife 
in all honour, and to share the half of thy bed, thy 
lock and key, and every third penny which you two 
may possess, or may inherit, and all the rights which 
Upland's laws provide, and the holy king Erik gave." 
The dinner is now served, and the bride sits between 
the bridegroom and the priest. The spokesman deli- 
vers an oration after the ancient custom of his fathers. 
He interlards it well with quotations from the Bible ; 
and invites the Saviour to be present at this marriage 
feast, as he was at the marriage feast in Cana of Ga- 
lilee. The table is not sparingly set forth. Each 
makes a long arm, and the feast goes cheerily on. 
Punch and brandy pass round between the courses, 
and here and there a pipe is smoked, while waiting 
for the next dish. They sit long at table ; but, as all 
things must have an end, so must a Swedish dinner. 
Then the dance begins. It is led off by the bride and 



RURAL LIFE IN SWEDEN. 165 

the priest, who perform a solemn minuet together. 
Not till after midnight comes the Last Dance. The 
girls form a ring around the bride, to keep her from 
the hands of the married women, who endeavour to 
break through the magic circle, and seize their new 
sister. After long struggling they succeed ; and the 
crown is taken from her head and the jewels from her 
neck, and her boddice is unlaced and her kirtle taken 
off; and like a vestal virgin clad all in white she goes, 
but it is to her marriage chamber, not to her grave ; 
and the wedding guests follow her with lighted can- 
dles in their hands. And this is a village bridal. 

Nor must I forget the suddenly changing seasons 
of the Northern clime. There is no long and lingering 
spring, unfolding leaf and blossom one by one ; — no 
long and lingering autumn, pompous with many- 
coloured leaves and the glow of Indian summers. 
But winter and summer are wonderful, and pass into 
each other. The quail has hardly ceased piping in 
the corn, when winter from the folds of trailing clouds 
sows broadcast over the land snow, icicles, and rattling 
hail. The days wane apace. Ere long the sun hardly 
rises above the horizon, or does not rise at all. The 
moon and the stars shine through the day; only, at 
noon, they are pale and wan, and in the southern sky, 
a red, fiery glow, as of sunset, burns along the horizon 
and then goes out. And pleasantly under the silver 
moon, and under the silent, solemn stars, ring the 



166 RURAL LIFE IN SWEDEN. 

steel-shoes of the skaters on the frozen sea, and voices, 
and the sound of bells. 

And now the Northern Lights begin to burn, faintly 
at first, like sunbeams playing in the waters of the 
blue sea. Then a soft crimson glow tinges the heavens. 
There is a blush on the cheek of night. The colours 
come and go, and change from crimson to gold, from 
gold to crimson. The snow is stained with rosy light. 
Twofold from the zenith, east and west, flames a fiery 
sword ; and a broad band passes athwart the heavens, 
like a summer sunset. Soft purple clouds come sailing 
over the sky, and through their vapoury folds the 
winking stars shine white as silver. With such pomp 
as this is Merry Christmas ushered in, though only a 
single star heralded the first Christmas. And in 
memory of that day the Swedish peasants dance on 
straw ; and the peasant girls throw straws at the tim- 
bered roof of the hall, and for every one that sticks 
in a crack shall a groomsman come to their wedding. 
Merry Christmas indeed ! For pious sou] 3 there shall 
be church songs and sermons, but for Swedish pea- 
sants, brandy and nut-brown ale in wooden bowls ; 
and the great yulecake crowned with a cheese, and 
garlanded with apples, and upholding a three-armed 
candlestick over the Christmas feast. They may tell 
tales, too, of Jons Lundsbracka, and Lunkenfus, and 
the great Eiddar Finke of Pingsdaga * 

And now the glad, leafy mid- summer, full of bios 
* Titles of Swedish popular tales. 



RURAL LIFE IN SWEDEN. 16? 

soms and the song of nightingales, is come! Saint 
John has taken the flowers and festival of heathen 
Balder ; and in every village there is a May-pole fifty 
feet high ; with wreaths, and roses, and ribbons, stream- 
ing in the wind, and a noisy weathercock on top, to 
tell the village whence the wind cometh and whither 
it goeth. The sun does not set till ten o'clock at 
night ; and the children are at play in the streets an 
hour later. The windows and doors are all open, and 
you may sit and read till midnight without a candle. 
O how beautiful is the summer night, which is not 
night, but a sunless, yet unclouded day, descending 
upon earth with dews, and shadows, and refreshing 
coolness! How beautiful the long, mild twilight, 
which, like a silver clasp, unites to-day with yester- 
day ! How beautiful the silent hour, when Morning 
and Evening thus sit together, hand in hand, beneath 
the starless sky of midnight ! 

From the church -tower in the public square the 
bell tolls the hour, with a soft, musical chime; and 
the watchman, whose watch-tower is the belfry, blows 
a blast in his horn, for each stroke of the hammer, 
and four times, to the four corners of the heavens, in 
a sonorous voice, he chants, — 

" Ho ! watchman, ho ! 
Twelve is the clock! 
God keep our town 
From fire and brand 
And hostile hand! 
Twelve is the clock ! " 



168 THE FA UN OF PRAXITELES. 

From his swallow's nest in the belfry he can see the 
sun all night long; and farther north the priest stands 
at his door in the warm midnight, and lights his pipe 
with a common burning-glass. 



SELECT PASSAGES FROM "THE MARBLE 
FAUN: OR, THE ROMANCE OF MONTE 
BENI." 

BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 



THE FAUN OF PRAXITELES. 

HE Faun is the marble image of a young man, 
leaning his right arm on the trunk or stump 
of a tree ; one hand hangs carelessly by his side ; in 
the other he holds the fragment of a pipe, or some 
such sylvan instrument of music. His only garment — 
a lion's skin, with the claws upon his shoulder — falls 
half way down his back, leaving the limbs and entire 
front of the figure nude. The form, thus displayed, 
is marvellously graceful, but has a fuller and mere 
rounded outline, more flesh, and less of heroic muscle 
than the old sculptors were wont to assign to their 
types of masculine beauty. The character of the face 
corresponds with the figure ; it is most agreeable in 
outline and feature, but rounded and somewhat volup- 



THE FA UN OF PRAXITELES. 169 

tuously developed, especially about the throat and 
chin; the nose is almost straight, but very slightly 
curves inward, thereby acquiring an indescribable 
charm of geniality and humor. The mouth, with its 
full yet delicate lips, seems so nearly to smile outright, 
that it calls forth a responsive smile. The whole statue 
— unlike anything else that ever was wrought in that 
severe material of marble — conveys the idea of an 
amiable and sensual creature, easy, mirthful, apt for 
jollity, yet not incapable of being touched by pathos. 
It is impossible to gaze long at this stone image with- 
out conceiving a kindly sentiment towards it, as if its 
substance were warm to the touch, and imbued with 
actual life. It comes very close to some of our plea- 
santest sympathies. 

Perhaps it is the very lack of moral severity, of any 
high and heroic ingredient in the character of the 
Faun, that makes it so delightful an object to the 
human eye and to the frailty of the human heart. The 
being here represented is endowed with no principle 
of virtue, and would be incapable of comprehending 
such ; but he would be true and honest by dint of his 
simplicity. We should expect from him no sacrifice 
or effort for an abstract cause ; there is not an atom 
of martyr's stuff in all that softened marble ; but he 
has a capacity for strong and warm attachment, and 
might act devotedly through its impulse, and even die 
for it at need. It is possible, too, that the Faun might 
be educated through the medium of his emotions, so 

15 



110 THE FAUN OF PRAXITELES. 

that the coarser animal portion of his nature might 
eventually be thrown into the background, though 
never utterly expelled. 

The animal nature, indeed, is a most essential part 
of the Faun's composition ; for the characteristics of 
the brute creation meet and combine with those of 
humanity in this strange yet true and natural concep- 
tion of antique poetry and art. Praxiteles has subtly 
diffused throughout his work that mute mystery which 
so hopelessly perplexes us whenever we attempt to 
gain an intellectual or sympathetic knowledge of the 
lower orders of creation. The riddle is indicated, 
however, only by two definite signs ; these are the two 
ears of the Faun, which are leaf-shaped, terminating 
in little peaks, like those of some species of animals. 
Though not so seen in the marble, they are probably 
to be considered as clothed in fine, downy fur. In the 
coarser representations of this class of mythological 
creatures, there is another token of brute kindred, — a 
certain caudal appendage ; which, if the Faun of 
Praxiteles must be supposed to possess it at all, is 
hidden by the lion's skin that forms his garment. The 
pointed and furry ears, therefore, are the sole indica- 
tions of his wild, forest nature. 

Only a sculptor of the finest imagination, the most 
delicate taste, the sweetest feeling, and the rarest 
artistic skill — in a word, a sculptor and a poet too — 
could have first dreamed of a Faun in this guise, and 
then have succeeded in imprisoning the sportive and 



THE DYING GLADIATOR. 1U 

frisky thing in marble. Neither man nor animal, and 
yet no monster ; bnt a being in whom both races meet 
on friendly ground! The idea grows coarse as we 
handle it, and hardens in our grasp. But, if the spec- 
tator broods long over the statue, he will be conscious 
of its spell ; all the pleasantness of sylvan life, all the 
genial and happy characteristics of creatures that 
dwell in woods and fields, will seem to be mingled and 
kneaded into one substance, along with the kindred 
qualities in the human soul. Trees, grass, flowers, 
woodland streamlets, cattle, deer, and unsophisticated 
man ! The essence of all these was compressed long 
ago, and still exists within that discoloured marble 
surface of the Faun of Praxiteles. 

And, after all, the idea may have been no dream, 
but rather a poet's reminiscence of a period when 
man's affinity with nature was more strict, and his 
fellowship with every living thing more intimate and 
dear. 

THE DYING GLADIATOK. 

" I used to admire this statue exceedingly," he 
[Kenyon] remarked, "but, latterly, I find myself 
getting weary and annoyed that the man should be 
such a length of time leaning on his arm in the very 
act of death. If he is so terribly hurt, why does he 
not sink down and die without further ado ? Flitting 
moments, imminent emergencies, imperceptible inter- 



172 DESCRIPTION OF A FOUNTAIN. 

vals between two breaths, ought not to be encrusted 
with the eternal repose of marble ; in any sculptural 
subject, there should be a moral standstill, since there 
must of necessity be a physical one. Otherwise, it is 
like flinging a block of marble up into the air, and by 
some trick or enchantment, causing it to stick there. 
You feel that it ought to come down, and are dissatis- 
fied that it does not obey the natural law." 

DESCRIPTION OF A FOUNTAIN. 

In the centre of the court, under the blue Italian 
sky ; and with the hundred windows of the vast palace 
gazing down upon it, from four sides, appears a foun- 
tain. It brims over from one stone basin to another, 
or gushes from a Naiad's urn, or spirts its many little 
jets from the mouths of nameless monsters, which 
were merely grotesque and artificial when Bernini, or 
whoever was their unnatural father, first produced 
them ; but now the patches of moss, the tufts of grass, 
the trailing maiden-hair, and all sorts of verdant weeds 
that thrive in the cracks and crevices of moist marble, 
tell us that Nature takes the fountain back into her 
great heart, and cherishes it as kindly as if it were a 
woodland spring. And, hark, the pleasant murmur, 
the gurgle, the plash ! You might hear just those 
tinkling sounds from any tiny water-fall in the forest, 
though here they gain a delicious pathos from the 
stately echoes that reverberate their natural language. 



NEEDLE- WORK, 173 

So the fountain is not altogether glad, after all its 
three centuries of play ! 



NEEDLE-WORK. 

There is something extremely pleasant, and even 
touching — at least, of very sweet, soft, and winning 
effect — in this peculiarity of needle-work, distinguish- 
ing women from men. Our own sex is incapable of 
any such by-play aside from the main business of life • 
but women — be they of what earthly rank they may, 
however gifted with intellect or genius, or endowed 
with awful beauty — have always some little handiwork 
ready to fill the tiny gap of every vacant moment. A 
needle is familiar to the fingers of them all. A queen, 
no doubt, plies it on occasion ; the woman-poet can 
use it as adroitly as her pen ; the woman's eye, that 
has discovered a new star, turns from its glory to send 
the polished little instrument gleaming along the hem 
of her kerchief, or to darn a casual fray in her dress. 
And they have greatly the advantage of us in this 
respect. The slender thread of silk or cotton keeps 
them united with the small, familiar, gentle interests 
of life, the continually operating influences of which 
do so much for the health of the character, and carr}>- 
off what would otherwise be a dangerous accumula- 
tion of morbid sensibility. A vast deal of human 
sympathy runs along this electric line, stretching from 
the throne to the wicker-chair of the humblest seam- 

15* 



174 THE ITALIAN CLIMATE. 

stress, and keeping high and low^n a species of com- 
munion with their kindred beings. Methinks it is a 
token of healthy and gentle characteristics, when 
women of high thoughts and accomplishments love to 
sew ; especially as they are never more at home with 
their own hearts than while so occupied. 

THE ITALIAN CLIMATE. 

The Italian climate robs age of its reverence, and 
makes it look newer than it is. Not the Coliseum, nor 
the tombs of the Appian Way, nor the oldest pillar in 
the Forum, nor any other Roman ruin, be it as dilapi- 
dated as it may, ever give the impression of venerable 
antiquity which we gather, along with the ivy, from 
the gray walls of an English abbey or castle. And 
yet every brick or stone, which we pick up among the 
former, had fallen, ages before the foundation of the 
latter was begun. This is owing to the kindliness with 
which Nature takes an English ruin to her heart, 
covering it with ivy, as tenderly as Robin Redbreast 
covered the dead babes with forest leaves. She strives 
to make it a part of herself, gradually obliterating the 
handiwork of man, and supplanting it with her own 
mosses and trailing verdure, till she has won the whole 
structure back. But, in Italy, whenever man has once 
hewn a stone, Nature forthwith relinquishes her right 
to it, and never lays her finger on it again. Age after 
age finds it bare and naked, in the barren sunshine, 



DESCRIPTION OF SAINT PETER'S. 1T5 

and leaves it so. Besides this natural disadvantage, 
too, each succeeding century, in Rome, has done its 
.best to ruin the very ruins, so far as their picturesque 
effect is concerned, by stealing away the marble and 
hewn stone, and leaving only yellow bricks, which 
never can look venerable. 

ON THE APPRECIATION OF A PICTURE. 

A picture, however admirable the painter's art, and 
wonderful his power, requires of the spectator a sur- 
render of himself, in due proportion with the miracle 
which has been wrought. Let the canvas glow as it 
may, you must look with the eye of faith, or its highest 
excellence escapes you. There is always the necessity 
of helping out the painter's art with your own re- 
sources of sensibility and imagination. Not that these 
qualities shall really add anything to what the master 
has effected ; but they must be put so entirely under 
his control, and work along with him to such an ex- 
tent, that, in a different mood, when you are cold and 
critical, instead of sympathetic, you will be apt to 
fancy that the loftier merits of the picture were of 
your own dreaming, not of his creating. 

DESCRIPTION OF SAINT PETER'S. 

One afternoon, as Hilda entered Saint Peter's in 
sombre mood, its interior beamed upon her with all 
the effect of a new creation. It seemed an embodi- 



176 DESCRIPTION OF SAINT PETER'S. 

ment of whatever the imagination could conceive, or 
the heart desire, as a magnificent, comprehensive, 
majestic symbol of religious faith. . All splendour was 
included within its verge, and there was space for all. 
She gazed with delight even at the multiplicity of 
ornament. She was glad at the cherubim that flut- 
tered upon the pilasters, and of the marble doves, 
hovering, unexpectedly, with green olive branches of 
precious stones. She could spare nothing now, of the 
manifold magnificence thai bad been lavished, in a 
hundred places, richly enough to have made world- 
famous shrines in any other church, but which here 
melted away into the vast, sunny breadth, and were 
of no separate account. Yet each contributed its little 
all towards the grandeur of the whole. 

She would not have banished one of those grim 
popes, who sit each over his own tomb, scattering cold 
benedictions out of their marble hands ; nor a single 
frozen sister of the Allegoric family, to whom — as, 
like hired mourners at an English funeral, it costs 
them no wear and tear of heart — is assigned the office 
of weeping for the dead. If you choose to see these 
things, they present themselves ; if you deem them 
unsuitable and out of place, they vanish, individually, 
but leave their life upon the walls. 

The pavement ! it stretched out inimitably, a plain 
of many-coloured marble, where thousands of wor- 
shippers might kneel together, and shadowless angels 
tread among them without brushing their heavenly 



GUIDO'S BEATRICE. Ill 

garments against those earthly ones. The roof! the 
dome ! Kich, gorgeous, filled with sunshine, cheerfully 
sublime, and fadeless after centuries, those lofty depths 
seemed to translate the heavens to mortal comprehen- 
sion, and help the spirit upward to a yet higher and 
wider sphere. Must not the faith, that built this match- 
less edifice, and warmed, illuminated, and overflowed 
from it, include whatever can satisfy human aspira- 
tions at the loftiest, or minister to human necessity at 
the sorest ? If Eeligion had a material home, was it 
not here ? 



During a visit made by Miriam to the studio of Hilda, the latter 
shows her sister artist a copy she has just finished of Guido's 
celebrated picture, which is thus described : 

The picture represented simply a female head; a 
very youthful, girlish, perfectly beautiful face, envel- 
oped in white drapery, from beneath which strayed a 
lock or two of what seemed a rich, though hidden 
luxuriance of auburn hair. The eyes were large and 
brown, and met those of the spectator, but evidently 
with a strange, ineffectual effort to escape. There was 
a little redness about the eyes, very slightly indicated, 
so that you would question whether or no the girl had 
been weeping. The whole face was quiet ; there was 
no distortion or disturbance of any single feature; 
nor was it easy to see why the expression was not 



ITS GUIDO'S BEATRICE. 

cheerful, or why a single touch of the artist's pencil 
should not brighten it into joyousness. But, in fact, 
it was the very saddest picture ever painted or con- 
ceived ; it involved an unfathomable depth of sorrow, 
the sense of which came to the observer by a sort of 
intuition. It was a sorrow that removed this beautiful 
girl out of the sphere of humanity, and set her in a 
far-off region, the remoteness of which — while yet her 
face is so close before us, — makes us shiver as at a 
spectre. 

******** 

"And now that you have done it, Hilda, can you in- 
terpret what the feeling is, that gives this picture such 
a mysterious force ? For my part, though deeply sen- 
si ble of its influence, I cannot seize it." 

"Nor can I, in words," replied her friend. "But 
while I was painting her, I felt all the time as if she 
were trying to escape from my gaze. She knows that 
her sorrow is so strange and so immense, that she 
ought to be solitary forever, both for the world's sake 
and her own ; and this is the reason we feel such a 
distance between Beatrice and ourselves, even when 
our eyes meet hers. It is infinitely heart-breaking to 
meet her glance, and to feel that nothing can be done 
\ to help or comfort her ; neither does she ask help or 
comfort, knowing the hopelessness of her case better 
than we do. She is a fallen angel — fallen, and }^et 
sinless ; and it is only this depth of sorrow, with its 
weight and darkness, that keeps her down upon earth, 



ROME. 179 

and brings her within our view even while it sets her 
beyond our reach." 

ROME. 

When we have once known Eome, and left her 
where she lies, like a long decaying corpse, retaining 
a trace of the noble shape it was, but with accumulated 
dust and a fungous growth overspreading all its more 
admirable features — left her in utter weariness, no 
doubt, of her narrow, crooked, intricate streets, so 
uncomfortably paved with little squares of lava that 
to tread over them is a penitential pilgrimage, so in- 
describably ugly, moreover, so cold, so alley-like, into 
which the sun never falls, and where a chill wind 
forces its deadly breath into our lungs — left her, tired 
of the sight of those immense seven -storied, yellow- 
washed hovels, or call them palaces, where all that is 
dreary in domestic life seems magnified and multi- 
plied, and weary of climbing those staircases, which 
ascend from a ground-floor of cook-shops, cobblers' 
stalls, stables, and regiments of cavalry, to a middle 
region of princes, cardinals, and ambassadors, and an 
upper tier of artists, just beneath the unattainable 
sky — left her, worn out with shivering at the cheer- 
less and smoky fireside by day, and feasting with our 
own substance the ravenous little populace of a Eoman 
bed at night — left her, sick at heart of Italian trickery, 
which has uprooted whatever faith in man's integrity 



180 ROME. 

had endured till now, and sick at stomach of sour 
bread, sour wine, rancid butter, and bad cookery, 
needlessly bestowed on evil meats — left her, disgusted 
with the pretence of holiness and the reality of misti- 
ness, each equally omnipresent — left her, half lifeless 
from the languid atmosphere, the vital principle of 
which has been used up long ago, or corrupted by 
myriads of slaughters — left her, crushed down in 
spirit with the desolation of her ruin, and the hope- 
lessness of her future — left her, in short, hating her 
with all our might, and adding our individual curse 
to the infinite anathema which her old crimes have 
unmistakably brought down, — when we have left 
Kome in such mood as this, we are astonished by the 
discovery, by-and-by, that our heartstrings have mys- 
teriously attached themselves to the Eternal City, and 
are drawing us thitherward again, as if it were more 
familiar, more intimately our home, than even the 
spot where we were born. 



SONGS AND LYRICS. 181 



SONGS AND LYRICS FROM TENNYSON'S 
"PRINCESS." 

[The lyric which the poet has introduced after each section of 
" The Princess," is a sort of chorus, designed to guide and inter- 
pret the sympathies of the reader, during the progress of the 
poem. They nearly all have reference to children and the ma- 
ternal affection, and their special purpose seems to be to keep 
prominently before the mind of the reader, the central idea of the 
poem, namely, that however much woman may gain in "mental 
breadth," she must not "fail in childward care, nor lose the 
childlike in the larger mind." These lyrics did not appear in 
the first edition of "The Princess." Their introduction appears 
to have been an after-thought with the poet. — Editor.] 



S thro' the land at eve we went, 
And pluck'd the ripen'd ears, 
"We fell out, my wife and I, 
O we fell out I know not why, 
And kiss'd again with tears. 

For when we came where lies the child 

We lost in other years, 
There above the little grave, 
O there above the little grave, 

We kiss'd again with tears. 

16 



182 SONGS AND LYRICS. 



CRADLE SONG. 



Sweet and low, sweet and low, 

Wind of the western sea, 
Low, low, breathe and blow, 

Wind of the western sea ! 
Over the rolling waters go, 
Come from the dying moon, and blow, 

Blow him again to me; 
While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps. 

Sleep and rest, sleep and rest, 

Father will come to thee soon; 
Rest, rest, on mother's breast, 

Father will come to thee soon ; 
Father will come to his babe in the nest, 
Silver sails all out of the west 

Under the silver moon : 
Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep. 

BUGLE SONG. 

The splendour falls on castle walls 

And snowy summits old in story: 
The long light shakes across the lakes, 
And the wild cataract leaps in glory. 
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, 
Blow, bugle ; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. 



SONGS AND LYRICS. 183 

O hark, O hear! how thin and clear, 
And thinner, clearer, farther going ! 
sweet and far from cliff and scar 
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing I 
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying : 
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. 

love, they die in yon rich sky, 

They faint on hill or field or river : 
Our echoes roll from soul to soul, 
And grow for ever and for ever. 
Blow, bugle, blow, set tha wild echoes flying, 
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying. 



THE DAYS THAT ARE NO MORE. 

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, 
Tears from the depth of some divine despair 
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, 
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields, 
And thinking of the days that are no more. 

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail, 
That brings our friends up from the underworld, 
Sad as the last which reddens over one 
That sinks with all we love below the verge ; 
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more. 



IM SONGS AND LYRIC 

Ah, sad and strange, as in dark summer, dawns 
The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds 
To dying ears, when unto dying <• 
The casement slowly grows a gli, square; 

So sad, so strange, the days that are no more. 

Dear as remember'd kisses after death, 
And sweet as those by ho jii'd 

On lips that are for others; d >ve, 

Deep as first love, and wild with all regret; 
Death in Life, the days that are no more. 

THE DEAD WARRIOR. 

Home they brought her warrior dead : 
She nor swoon 'd, nor utter'd cry : 

All her maidens, watching, said, 
"She must weep or she will die." 

Then they praised him, soft and low, 
Call'd him worthy to be loved, 

Truest friend and noblest foe ; 

Yet she neither spoke nor moved. 

Stole a maiden from her place, 

Lightly to the warrior stept, 
Took the face-cloth from the face ; 

Yet she neither moved nor wept. 



SONGS AND LYRICS. 185 

Eose a nurse of ninety years, 

Set his child upon her knee — 
Like summer tempest came her tears — 

"Sweet, my child, I live for thee." 

"ASK ME NO MORE." 

Ask me no more : the moon may draw the sea ; 

The cloud may stoop from heaven and take the 

shape, 
With fold to fold, of mountain or of cape ; 
But, O too fond, when have I answered thee ? 
Ask me no more. 

Ask me no more : what answer should I give ? 
I love not hollow cheek or faded eye : 
Yet, my friend, I will not have thee die ! 

Ask me no more, lest I should bid thee live ; 
Ask me no more. 

Ask me no more : thy fate and mine are sealed : 
I strove against the stream and all in vain : 
Let the great river take me to the main : 

No more, dear love, for at a touch I yield ; - 
Ask me no more. 



16 



18C SAXON AND LATIN ELEMENTS 



THE SAXON AND LATIN ELEMENTS OF 
THE ENGLISH L AN G U A G E ; — T II E PE- 
CULIAR PROVINCE OF EACE IN PO- 
ETIC DICTION. 

BY THOMAS D E QUIXCEY* 

fXK original obstacle to the favourable impree 
of the Wordsworthian poetry, and an i 
purely self-created, w »etic diction. 

The diction itself, without the the 3 of less con- 

sequence; for the mass of readers would have been 
too blind or too c it. But the pre 

to the second edition of his Poems 2 v.. is.. L799 — 
1800), compelled them to notice it. Nothing more 
injudicious was ever done by man. An unpopular 
truth would, at any rate, have been a bad inaugu- 
ration, for what, on other accounts, the author had an- 
nounced as "an experiment.'' Hi was already 
an experiment as regarded the quality of the subjects 
selected, and as regarded the mode of treating them. 
That was surely trial enough for the reader's untrained 
sensibilities, without the unpopular truth besides, as 
to the diction. But, in the mean time, this truth, be- 
sides being unpopular, was also, in part, false : it was 
true, and it was not true. And it was not true in a 

* From the author's essay on Wordsworth's Poetry. 



OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 187 

double way. Stating broadly, and allowing it to be 
taken for his meaning, that the diction of ordinary 
life, in his own words, " the very language of man," 
was the proper diction for poetry, the 'writer meant no 
such thing ; for only a part of this diction, according to 
his own subsequent restriction, was available for such 
a use. And, secondly, as his own subsequent practice 
showed, even this part was available only for peculiar 
classes of poetry. In his oavii exquisite "Laodamia," 
in his " Sonnets," in his " Excursion," few are his obli- 
gations to the idiomatic language of life, as dis- 
tinguished from that of books, or of prescriptive 
usage. Coleridge remarked, justly, that "The Ex- 
cursion" bristles beyond most poems with what are 
called "dictionary" words; that is, polysyllabic words 
of Latin or Greek origin. And so it must ever be, in 
meditative poetry upon solemn philosophic themes. 
The gamut of ideas needs a corresponding gamut of 
expressions ; the scale of the thinking, which ranges 
through every key, exacts, for the artist, an unlimited 
command over the entire scale of the instrument which 
he employs. Never, in fact, was there a more errone- 
ous direction than that given by a modern rector of 
the Glasgow University to the students, -^ viz., that 
they should cultivate the Saxon part of our language, 
at the cost of the Latin part. Nonsense ! Both are in- 
dispensable ; and, speaking generally without stopping 
to distinguish as to subjects, both are equally indis- 
pensable. Pathos, in situations which are homely, or 



188 SAXON AND LATIN ELEMENTS, ETC. 

at all connected with domestic affections, naturally 
moves by Saxon words. Lyrical emotion of every 
kind, which (to merit the name of lyrical) must be in 
the state of flux and reflux, or, generally, of agitation, 
also requires the Saxon element of our language. 
And why? Because the Saxon is the abori'jin.il ele- 
ment; the basis, and not the superstructure; c< 
quently, it comprehends all the ideas which are natural 
to the heart of man, and to the elementary situations 
of life. And, although the Latin often furnishes Ofl 
with duplicates of these ideas, yet the Saxon or mono- 
syllabic part has the advantage of precedency in our 
use and knowledge; for it is the language of the 
nursery, whether for rich or poor, in which greal phi- 
lological academy, no toleration is given to words in 

'y" or " ation." There is, therefore, a great ad- 
vantage, as regards the consecration to our feel i i 

Led, by usage and custom, upon the Saxon strands, 
in the mixed yarn of our native tongue. And, uni- 

illy, this may be remarked — that, wherever the 

ion of a poem is of that sort, which uses, presumes, 
or postulates the ideas, without seeking to extend them, 
Saxon will be the "cocoon" (to speak by the language 
applied to silkworms), which the poem spins for itself. 
But, on the other hand, where the motion of the feel- 
ing is by and through the ideas, where (as in religious 
or meditative poetry — Young's, for instance, or Cow- 
per's) the pathos creeps and kindles underneath the 
very tissues of the thinking, there the Latin will pre- 



VISIT OF THE WISE MEN, ETC. 189 

dominate ; and so much, so, that, whilst the flesh, the 
blood, and the muscle, will be often almost exclusivel y 
Latin, the articulations only, or hinges of connection, 
will be Anglo-Saxon. 



VISIT OF THE WISE MEN TO THE IN- 
FANT S AVI UB, AND THE FLIGHT INT 
EGYPT. 

GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW, CHAP. II. 

tOW when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea 
in the days of -Herod the king, behold, there 
came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, saying, 
Where is he that -is born King of the Jews? for we 
have seen his star in the east, and are come to wor- 
ship him. When Herod the king had heard these 
things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. 
And when he had gathered all the chief priests and 
scribes of the people together, he demanded of them 
where Christ should be born. And they said unto 
him, In Bethlehem of Judea: for thus it is written 
by the prophet, And thou Bethlehem, in the land of 
Judah, art not the least among the princes of Judah : 
for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule 
my people Israel. Then Herod, when he had privily 
called the wise men, inquired of them diligently, what 



190 VISIT OF THE WISE MEN 

time the star appeared. And he sent them to Bethle- 
hem, and said, Go and search diligently for the young 
child; and when ye have found him, bring me word 
again, that I may come and worship him also. When 
they had heard the king, they departed; and, lo, the 
star, which they saw in the east, w r ent before them, 
till it came and stood over where the young child 
was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced with ex- 
ceeding great joy. 

And when they were come into the house, they saw 
the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down. 
and worshipped him : and when they had opened their 
treasures, they presented unto him gifts ; gold, and 
frankincense, and myrrh. And being warned of God 
in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they 
departed into their own country another way. And 
when they were departed, behold, the angel of the 
Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, 
and take the young child and his mother, and flee into 
Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word: 
for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him. 
When he arose, he took the young child and his 
mother by night, and departed into Egypt : 

And was there until the death of Herod: that it 
might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by 
the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called my 
son. 

Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of 
the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, 



TO THE INFANT SAVIOUR. 191 

and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and 
in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, 
according to the time which he had diligently enquired 
of the wise men. Then was fulfilled that which was 
spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying, In Eama was 
there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and 
great mourning, Eachel weeping for her children, and 
would not be comforted, because they are not. 

But when Herod was dead, behold, an angel of the 
Lord appeareth in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, Say- 
ing, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, 
and go into the land of Israel: for they are dead 
which sought the young child's life. And he arose, 
and took the young child and his mother, and came 
into the land of Israel. But when he heard that 
Archelaus did reign in Judsea in the room of his father 
Herod, he was afraid to go thither : notwithstanding, 
being warned of Grod in a dream, he turned aside into 
the parts of Galilee : And he came and dwelt in a 
city called Nazareth : that it might be fulfilled which 
was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a 
Nazarene, 



192 PARABLE OF THE PRODIGAL SON. 



PARABLE OF THE PRODIGAL SOX. 
GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE, XV., V. 11 — 32. 

CEKTAIN man had two sons : And the you 
of them said to his Gather, Father, give me the 
Ion of goods that falleth to me. And he divided 

unto them his living. And not many days after, the 
younger son gathered all together, and took his jour- 
ney into a far country, and there wasted his substance 
with riotous living. And when he had spent all, there 
arose a mighty famine in that land ; and he began to 
be in want. And he went and joined himself to a 
citizen of that country ; and he sent him into his fields 
to feed swine. And he would fain have filled his belly 
with the husks that the swine did eat: and no man 
gave unto him. And when he came to himself r he 
said, How many hired servants of my father's have 
bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger ! 
I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto 
him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before 
thee, And am no more worthy to be called thy son : 
make me as one of thy hired servants. And he arose, 
and came to his father. But when he was yet a great 
way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and 
ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. And the 



PARABLE OF THE PRODIGAL SON. 193 

son said unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, 
and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called 
thy son. But the father said to his servants, Bring 
forth the best robe, and put it on him ; and put a ring 
on his hand, and shoes on his feet : And bring hither 
the fatted calf, and kill it ; and let us eat, and be merry : 
For this my son was dead, and is alive again ; he was 
lost, and is found. And they began to be merry. 
Now his elder son was in the field : and as he came 
and drew nigh to the house, he heard music and 
dancing. And he called one of the servants, and 
asked what these things meant. And he said unto 
him, Thy brother is come ; and thy father hath killed 
the fatted calf, because he hath received him safe and 
sound. And he was angry, and would not go in : 
therefore came his father out, and intreated him. And 
he answering said to his father, Lo, these many years 
do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy 
commandment ; and yet thou never gavest me a kid, 
that I might make merry with my friends: But as 
soon as this thy son was come, which hath devoured 
thy living with harlots, thou hast killed for him the 
fatted calf. And he said unto him, Son, thou art ever 
with me, and all that I have is thine. It was meet 
that we should make merry, and be glad : for this thy 
brother was dead, and is alive again ; and was lost, and> 
is found. 

17 



194 CHRIST AND THE WOMAN OF SAMARIA. 



CHRIST AND THE WOMAN OF SAMARIA. 
GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN, IV., V. 1 — 42. 

-HEN therefore the Lord knew how the Phari- 
sees had heard that Jesus made and baptized 
more disciples than John, (Though Jesus himself bap- 
tized not, but his disciples,) He left Judaea, and de- 
parted again into Galilee. And he must needs go 
through Samaria. Then cometh he to a city of 
Samaria, which is called Sychar, near to the parcel of 
ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Now 
Jacob's well was there. Jesus therefore, being wearied 
with his journey, sat thus on the well: and it was 
about the sixth hour. There cometh a woman of 
Samaria to draw water: Jesus saith unto her, Give 
me to drink. (For his disciples were gone away unto 
the city to buy meat.) Then saith the woman of 
Samaria unto him, How is it that thou, being a Jew, 
askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria ? 
(for the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.) 
Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the 
gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me 
to drink ; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he 
would have given thee living water. The woman saith 
unto him, Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the 



CHRIST AND THE WO MAN OF SAMARIA. 195 

well is deep : from whence then hast thou that living 
water ? Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which 
gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his 
children, and his cattle ? Jesus answered and said unto 
her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst 
again: But whosoever drinketh of the water that I 
shall give him shall never thirst ; but the water that 
I shall give him shall be in him a well of water spring- 
ing up into everlasting life. The woman saith unto 
him, Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither 
come hither to draw. Jesus saith unto her, Go, call 
thy husband, and come hither. The woman answered 
and said, I have no husband. Jesus said unto her, 
Thou hast well said, I have no husband : For thou 
hast had five husbands ; and he whom thou now hast 
is not thy husband : in that saidst thou truly. The 
woman saith unto him, Sir, I perceive that thou art a 
prophet. Our fathers worshipped in this mountain ; 
and ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men 
ought to worship. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, be- 
lieve me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in 
this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Fa- 
ther. Ye worship ye know not what ; we know what 
we worship ; for salvation is of the Jews. But the 
hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers 
shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth ; for 
the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a 
Spirit : and they that worship him must worship him 
in spirit and in truth. The woman saith unto him, I 



196 CHRIST AND THE W M A N F SA MARIA. 

know that Messias cometh, which is called Christ: 
when he is come, he will tell us all things. Jesus 
saith unto her, I that speak unto thee am he. 

And upon this came his disciples, and marvelled 
that he talked with the woman : yet no man said, 
What seekest thou ? or, Why talkest thou with her ? 
The woman then left her waterpot, and went her way 
into the city, and saith to the men, Come, see a man, 
which told me all things that ever I did : is not this 
the Christ ? Then they went out of the city, and came 
unto him. 

In the mean while his disciples prayed him, saying, 
Master, eat. But he said unto them, I have meat to 
eat that ye know not of. Therefore said the disciples 
one to another, Hath any man brought him aught to 
cat ? Jesus saith unto them, My meat is to do the will 
of him that sent me, and to finish his work. Say not 
ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh har- 
vest ? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and 
look on the fields ; for they are white already to har- 
vest. And he that reapeth, receiveth wages, and 
gathereth fruit unto life eternal: that both he that 
soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together. And 
herein is that saying true, One soweth, and another 
reapeth. I sent you to reap that whereon ye bestowed 
no labour: other men laboured, and ye are entered 
into their labours. 

And many of the Samaritans of that city believed 
on him for the saying of the woman, which testified, 



LADY CLARA VERE DE VERE. 19T 

He told me all that ever I did. So when the Samari- 
tans were come unto him, they besought him that he 
would tarry with them : and he abode there two days. 
And many more believed because of his own word ; 
And said unto the woman, Now we believe, not be- 
cause of thy saying : for we have heard him ourselves, 
and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour 
of the world. 



LADY CLARA VERE DE VERE. 
BY ALFRED TENNYSON. 

;ADY Clara Yere de Yere, 
Of me you shall not win renown: 
You thought to break a country heart 
For pastime, ere you went to town. 
At me you smiled, but unbeguiled 

I saw the snare, and I retired: 

The daughter of a hundred Earls, 

You are not one to be desired. 

Lady Clara Yere de Yere, 

I know you proud to bear your name, 
Your pride is yet no mate for mine, 

Too proud to care from whence I came. 

17* 



198 LADY CLARA VERE DE VERE. 

Nor would I break for your sweet sake 
A heart that doats on truer charms. 

A simple maiden in her flower 
Is worth a hundred coats-of-arms. 

Lady Clara Yere de Vere, 

Some meeker pupil you must find, 
For were you queen of all that is, 

I could not stoop to such a mind. 
You sought to prove how I could love, 

And my disdain is my reply. 
The lion on your old stone gates 

Is not more cold to you than I. 

Lady Clara Yere de Yere, 

You put strange memories in my head. 
Not thrice your branching limes have blown 

Since I beheld young Laurence dead. 
Oh, your sweet eyes, your low replies: 

A great enchantress you may be; 
But there was that across his throat 

Which you had hardly cared to see. 

Lady Clara Yere de Yere, 

When thus he met his mother's view, 

She had the passions of her kind, 
She spake some certain truths of you. 



LADY CLARA VERE DE VERE. 199 

Indeed I heard one bitter word 
That scarce is fit for you to hear ; 

Her manners had not that repose 
Which stamps the caste of Yere de Yere. 

Lady Clara Yere de Yere, 

There stands a spectre in your hall : 
The guilt of blood is at your door: 

You changed a wholesome heart to gall. 
You held your course without remorse, 

To make him trust his modest worth, 
And, last, you fix'd a vacant stare, 

And slew him with your noble birth. 

Trust me, Clara Yere de Yere, 

From yon blue heavens above us bent, 
The grand old gardener and his wife 

Smile at the claims of long descent. 
Howe'er it be, it seems to me, 

'Tis only noble to be good. 
Kind hearts are more than coronets, 

And simple faith than Norman blood. 

I know you, Clara Yere de Yere: 

You pine among your halls and towers : 

The languid light of your proud eyes 
Is wearied of the rolling hours. 



200 THE LORD OF BURLEIGH. 

In glowing health, with boundless wealth, 
But sickening of a vague disease, 

You know so ill to deal with time, 

You needs must play such pranks as these. 

Clara, Clara Vere de Vere, 

If Time be heavy on your hands, 
Are there no beggars at your gate, 

Nor any poor about your lands? 
Oh! teach the orphan-boy to read, 

Or teach the orphan -girl to sew, 
Pray Heaven for a human heart, 

And let the foolish yeoman go. 



THE LORD OF BURLEIGH. 
BY ALFRED TENNYSON. 

33 N her ear he whispers gaily, 
3B "If my heart by signs can tell, 
Maiden, I have watch'd thee daily, 

And I think thou lov'st me well." 
She replies, in accents fainter, 

"There is none I love like thee." 
He is but a landscape-painter, 

And a village maiden she. 



THE LORD OF BURLEIGH. 201 

He to lips, that fondly falter, 

Presses his without reproof: 
Leads her to the village altar, 

And they leave her father's roof. 
"I can make no marriage present: - 

Little can I give my wife. 
Love will make our cottage pleasant, 

And I love thee more than life." 
They by parks and lodges going 

See the lordly castles stand: 
Summer woods, about them blowing, 

Made a murmur in the land. 
From deep thought himself he rouses, 

Says to her that loves him well, 
"Let us see these handsome houses 

Where the wealthy nobles dwell." 
So she goes by him attended, 

Hears him lovingly converse, 
Sees whatever fair and splendid 

Lay betwixt his home and hers; 
Parks with oak and chestnut shady, 

Parks and order'd gardens great, 
Ancient homes of lord and lady, 

Built for pleasure and for state. 
All he shows her makes him dearer: 

Evermore she seems to gaze 
On that cottage growing nearer, 

Where they twain will spend their days. 



202 THE LORD OF BURL&iOH. 

O but she will love him truly! 

He shall have a cheerful home; 
She will order all things duly, 

When beneath his roof they come. 
Thus her heart rejoices greatly, 

Till a gateway she discerns 
With armorial bearings stately, 

And beneath the gate she turns; 
Sees a mansion more majestic 

Than all those she saw before: 
Many a gallant gay domestic 

Bows before him at the door. 
And they speak in gentle murmur, 

When they answer to his call, 
While he treads with footstep firmer, 

Leading on from hall to hall. 
And, while now she wonders blindly, 

Nor the meaning can divine, 
Proudly turns he round and kindly, 

"All of this is mine and thine." 
Here he lives in state and bounty, 

Lord of Burleigh, fair and free, 
Not a lord in all the county 

Is so great a lord as he. 
All at once the colour flushes 

Her sweet face from brow to chin : 
As it were with shame she blushes, 

And her spirit changed within. 



THE LORD OF BURLEIGH. 

Then her countenance all over 

Pale again as death did prove: 
But he clasp'd her like a lover, 

And he cheered her soul with love. 
So she strove against her weakness, 

Tho' at times her spirits sank: 
Shaped her heart with woman's meekness 

To all duties of her rank: 
And a gentle consort made he, 

And her gentle mind was such 
That she grew a noble lady, 

And the people loved her much. 
But a trouble weigh'd upon her, 

And perplex'd her, night and morn, 
With the burthen of an honour 

Unto which she was not born. 
Faint she grew, and ever fainter, 

As she murmur'd, "Oh, that he 
Were once more that landscape-painter, 

Which did win my heart from me!" 
So she droop'd and droop'd before him, 

Fading slowly from his side: 
Three fair children first she bore him, 

Then, before her time, she died. 
Weeping, weeping late and early, 

Walking up and pacing down, 
Deeply monrn'd the Lord of Burleigh, 

Burleigh-house by Stamford- town. 



204 PORTRAITS OF BYRON AND SHELLEY. 

And lie came to look upon her, 

And lie look'd at her and said, 
"Bring the dress and put it on her, 

That she wore when she was wed." 
Then her people, softly treading, 

Bore to earth her body, drest 
In the dress that she was wed in, 

That her spirit might have rest. 



PARALLEL BETWEEN THE PORTRAITS 
OF BYRON AND SHELLEY. 

BY GEORGE GILFILLAN 

C¥DN the forehead and head of Byron there is more 
3B massive power and breadth : Shelley's has a 
smooth, arched, spiritual expression; wrinkle there 
seems none on his brow ; it is as if perpetual youth 
had there dropped its freshness. Byron's eye seems 
the focus of pride and lust ; Shelley's is mild, pensive, 
fixed on you, but seeing you through the mist of his 
own idealism. Defiance curls on Byron's nostril, and 
sensuality steeps his full large lips ; the lower features 
of Shelley's face are frail, feminine, flexible. Byron's 
head is turned upwards ; as if, having risen proudly 
above his contemporaries, he were daring to claim 
kindred, or to demand a contest, with a superior order 



INTELLECTUAL QUALITIES OF MILTON. 205 

of beings : Shelley's is half bent, in reverence and 
humility, before some vast vision seen by his own eye 
alone. Misery erect, and striving to cover its retreat 
under an aspect of contemptuous fury, is the perma- 
nent and pervading expression of Byron's counten- 
ance : — sorrow, softened and shaded away by hope and 
habit, lies like a * holier day" of still moonshine upon 
that of Shelley. In the portrait of Byron, taken at 
the age of nineteen, you see the unnatural age of pre- 
mature passion ; his hair is young, his dress is youth- 
ful; but his face is old: — in Shelley you see the 
eternal child, none the less that his hair is gray, and 
that " sorrow seems half his immortality." 



INTELLECTUAL QUALITIES OF MILTON. 
BY WILLIAM ELLERY CHANGING-. 

fN speaking of the intellectual qualities of Milton, 
we may begin with observing, that the very 
splendour of his poetic fame has tended to obscure or 
conceal the extent of his mind, and the variety of its 
energies and attainments. To many he seems only a 
poet; when, in truth, he was a profound scholar, a 
man of vast compass of thought, imbued thoroughly 
with all ancient and modern learning, and able to 

18 



206 INTELLECTUAL QUALITIES OF MILTON. 

master, to mould, to impregnate with his own intellec- 
tual power, his great and various acquisitions. 

He had not learned the superficial doctrine of a later 
day, that poetry flourishes most in an uncultivated 
soil, and that imagination shapes its brightest visions 
from the mists of a superstitious age ; and he had no 
dread of accumulating knowledge, lest it should op- 
press and smother his genius. He was conscious of 
that within him, which could quicken all knowledge, 
and wield it with ease and might ; which could give 
freshness to old truths, and harmony to discordant 
thoughts ; which could bind together, by living ties 
and mysterious affinities, the most remote discoveries, 
and rear fabrics of glory and beauty from the rude 
materials which other minds had collected. 

Milton had that universality which marks the 
highest order of intellect. Though accustomed, almost 
from infancy, to drink at the fountains of classical 
literature, he had nothing of the pedantry and fasti- 
diousness which disdain all other draughts. His healthy 
mind delighted in genius, on whatever soil, or in what- 
ever age it burst forth and poured out its fulness. He 
understood too well the rights, and dignity, and pride 
of a creative imagination, to lay on it the laws of the 
Greek or Roman schools. Parnassus was not to him 
the only holy ground of genius. 

He felt that poetry was a universal presence. Great 
minds were everywhere his kindred. He felt the en- 
chantment of Oriental fiction, surrendered himself to 



INTELLECTUAL QUALITIES OF MILTON. 20? 

the strange creations of "Araby the Blest," and de- 
lighted still more in the romantic spirit of chivalry, 
and in the tales of wonder in which it was embodied. 
Accordingly, his poetry reminds us of the ocean, which 
adds to its own boundlessness, contributions from all 
regions under heaven. Nor was it only in the depart- 
ment of imagination that his acquisitions were vast. 
He travelled over the whole field of knowledge, as far 
as it had then been explored. 

His various philological attainments were used to 
put him in possession of the wisdom stored in all 
countries where the intellect had been cultivated. The 
natural philosophy, metaphysics, ethics, history, the- 
ology, and political science of his own, and former 
times, were familiar to him. Never was there a more 
unconfined mind ; and we would cite Milton as a 
practical example of the benefits of that universal 
culture of intellect, which forms one distinction of our 
times, but which some dread, as unfriendly to original 
thought. 

Let such remember, that mind is in its own nature 
diffusive. Its object is the universe, which is strictly 
one, or bound together by infinite connections and 
correspondences ; and accordingly its natural progress 
is from one to another field of thought : and wherever 
original power, creative genius exists, the mind, far 
from being distracted or oppressed by the variety of 
its acquisitions, will see more and more common bear- 
ings and hidden and beautiful analogies in all the 



208 THE SKELETON IN ARMOUR. 

objects of knowledge ; will see mutual light shed from 
truth to truth; and will compel, as with a kingly 
power, whatever it understands, to yield some tribute 
of proof, or illustration, or splendour, to whatever 
topic it would unfold. 



THE SKELETON IN ARMOUR. 
BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 



[The following Ballad was suggested to me while riding on 
the seashore at Newport. A year or two previous a skeleton had 
been dug up at Fall River, clad in broken and corroded armour ; 
and the idea occurred to me of connecting it with the Round 
Tower at Newport, generally known hitherto as the Old Wind- 
mill, though now claimed by the Danes as a work of their early 
ancestors.] 



PEAK! speak I thou fearful guest! 
Who, with thy hollow breast 
Still in rude armour drest, 

Comest to daunt me! 
Wrapt not in Eastern balms, 
But with thy fleshless palms 
Stretched, as if asking alms, 
Why dost thou haunt me?" 



THE SKELETON IN ARMOUR. 209 

Then, from those cavernous eyes 
Pale flashes seemed to rise, 
As when the Northern skies 

Gleam in December; 
And, like the water's flow 
Under December's snow, 
Came a dull voice of woe 

From the heart's chamber. 



"I was a Viking old! 
My deeds, though manifold, 
No Skald in song has told, 

No Saga taught thee! 
Take heed, that in thy verse 
Thou dost the tale rehearse, 
Else dread a dead man's curse; 

For this I sought thee. 

"Far in the Northern Land, 
By the wild Baltic's strand, 
I, with my childish hand, 

Tamed the ger-falcon; 
And, with my skates fast-bound, 
Skimmed the half-frozen Sound, 
That the poor whimpering hound 

Trembled to walk on, 
18* 



210 THE SKELETON IN ARMOUR. 

"Oft to his frozen lair 
Tracked I the grizzly bear, 
While from my path the hare 

Fled like a shadow; 
Oft through the forest dark 
Followed the were-wolf's bark, 
Until the soaring lark 

Sang from the meadow. 



"But when I older grew, 
Joining a corsair's crew, 
O'er the dark sea I flew 

With the marauders. 
Wild was the life we led; 
Many the souls that sped, 
Many the hearts that bled, 

By our stern orders. 

"Many a wassail-bout 
Wore the long winter out; 
Often our midnight shout 

Set the cocks crowing, 
As we the Berserk's tale 
Measured in cups of ale, 
Draining the oaken pail, 

Filled to o'erflowing. 



THE SKELETON IN ARMO UR. 211 

"Once as I told in glee 
Tales of the stormy sea, 
Soft eyes did gaze on me, 

Burning yet tender; 
And as the white stars shine 
On the dark Norway pine, 
On that dark heart of mine 

Fell their soft splendour. 



"I wooed the bine-eyed maid, 
Yielding, yet half afraid, 
And in the forest's shade 

Our vows were plighted. 
Under its loosened vest 
Fluttered her little breast, 
Like birds, within their nest 

By the hawk frighted. 

"Bright in her father's hall 
Shields gleamed upon the wall, 
Loud sang the minstrels all, 

Chaunting his glory; 
When of old Hildebrand 
I asked his daughter's hand, 
Mute did the minstrels stand 
To hear my story. 



212 THE SKELETON IN ARMOUR 

"While the brown ale he quaffed, 
Loud then the champion laughed, 
And as the wind-gusts waft 

The sea-foam brightly, 
So the loud laugh of scorn, 
Out of those lips unshorn, 
From the deep drinking-horn 

Blew the foam lightly. 



"She was a Prince's child, 
I but a Viking wild, 
And though she blushed and smiled, 

I was discarded! 
Should not the dove so white 
Follow the sea-mew's flight, 
Why did they leave that night 

Her nest unguarded? 

"Scarce had I put to sea, 
Bearing the maid with me, — 
Fairest of all was she 

Among the Norsemen! — 
When on the white sea-strand, 
Waving his armed hand, 
Saw we old Hildebrand, 

With twenty horsemen. 



THE SKELETON IN ARMOUR. 213 

"Then launched they to the blast, 
Bent like a reed each mast, 
Yet we were gaining fast, 

When the wind failed us; 
And with a sudden flaw 
Came round the gusty Skaw, 
So that our foe we saw 
Laugh as he hailed us. 



And as to catch the gale 
Eound veered the flapping sail, 
Death!' was the helmsman's hail 

'Death without quarter!' 
Mid-ships, with iron keel, 
Struck we her ribs of steel; 
Down her black hull did reel 
Through the black water! 



"As with his wings aslant, 
Sails the fierce cormorant, 
Seeking some rocky haunt, 

With his prey laden, 
So toward the open main, 
Beating to sea again, 
Through the wild hurricane, 

Bore I the maiden. 



214 THE SKELETON IN ARMOUR 

"Three weeks we westward bore, 
And when the storm was o'er, 
Cloud-like we saw the shore 

Stretching to lee-ward; 
There for my lady's bower 
Built I the lofty tower, 
Which, to this very hour, 

Stands looking sea-ward. 



There lived we many years ; 
Time dried the maiden's tears; 
She had forgot her fears, 

She was a mother; 
Death closed her mild blue eyes, 
Under that tower she lies; 
Ne'er shall the sun arise 

On such another! 



Still grew my bosom then, 
Still as a stagnant fen! 
Hateful to me were men, 

The sun-light hateful! 
In the vast forest here, 
Clad in my warlike gear, 
Fell I upon my spear, 

0, death was grateful! 



DON QUIXOTE. 215 

"Thus, seamed with many scars, 
Bursting these prison bars, 
Up to its native stars 

My soul ascended! 
There from the flowing bowl 
Deep drinks the warrior's soul, 
Shoal! to the Northland! skoal!"* 

— Thus the tale ended. 



DON QUIXOTE, 



BY HENKY GILES. 



fN" youth we revel in the mirth of this story ; we 
laugh at the exploits of the knight; we laugh 
at the misfortunes of the squire ; we have no reverence 
for the chivalrous but bareboned imitation of Beltene- 
bros; the famous recoverer of Mambrino's helmet; 
we extend no pity to the corpulent imbodiment of 
proverbs that rises beside him ; we enjoy with all our 
hearts the capers which the merry lodgers of the inn 
compel him to perform in the air without aid of tight 
rope or slack rope ; his flounderings are to us most 

* In Scandinavia this is the customary salutation when drink- 
ing a health. I have slightly changed the orthography of the 
word, in order to preserve the correct pronunciation. 



216 DON QUIXOTE. 

exhilarating fun ; and, in imagination, we ourselves 
take hold upon the blanket. But, when time has 
taught us more sober lessons, — when we learn that 
we too have dreamed, that we too have had our buffet- 
ings and blanketings, — we think differently. When 
we learn that we likewise have often put the shapings 
of fancy for the substance of truth, the coinage of the 
brain for the creation of reality, the vision in the wish 
for the fulfilment in the fact, laughter is changed into 
reflection, and musing takes the place of gaiety. 
There is hidden meaning in these wondrous imagin- 
ings of Cervantes ; and experience, after many days, 
does not fail to show it. We have gleanings from 
them of life's purpose. We are here to do, and not 
to dream ; we are here to endure as much as to enjoy ; 
and, through doing and endurance, to grow — to 
grow in all that elevates the soul, in all that crowns it 
with genuine dignity, in all that clothes it at the same 
time with honour and humility, in all that renders it 
more gentle as it becomes more commanding. In the 
same manner we have gleamings of life's nature. 
Life is not all meditation ; it is not all business ; it is 
not all in the ideal ; it is not all in the actual ; and 
that life is best in which these several elements are 
best united. The ideal separate from the actual be- 
comes mysticism or extravagance ; the actual separate 
from the ideal degenerates into the sensual or into the 
sordid. It is in the proportioned combination of the 
ideal with the actual that life is highest ; it is in this 



QODIVA. 217 

proportioned combination that life presents the finest 
union of enthusiasm and reflection, the finest harmony 
of beauty and of power. 



GODIVA. 
BY LEIGH HUNT. 

HIS is the lady who, under the title of Countess 
of Coventry, used to make such a figure in our 
childhood upon some old pocket-pieces of that city. 
"We hope she is in request there still ; otherwise the 
inhabitants deserve to be sent from Coventry. That 
city was famous in saintly legends for the visit of the 
eleven thousand virgins — an "incredible number," 
quoth Selden. But the eleven thousand virgins have 
vanished with their credibility, and a noble-hearted 
woman of flesh and blood is Coventry's true immor- 
tality. 

The story of Grodiva is not a fiction, as many sup- 
pose it. At least it is to be found in Matthew of 
"Westminster,* and is not of a nature to have been a 

* Flores Historiarum. A translation of this work was pub- 
lished by Bohn, in 2 vols., London, 1853, entitled : " The Flowers 
of History, especially such as relate to the affairs of Britain. 
From the beginning of the world to the year 1307. Collected 
by Matthew of Westminster. Translated from the original, by 
C. D. Yonge, B. A." 
19 



218 OODIVA. 

mere invention. Her name, and that of her husband, 
Leofric, are mentioned in an old chapter recorded by 
another early historian. That the story is omitted by 
Hume and others, argues little against it; for the 
latter are accustomed to confound the most interesting 
anecdotes of times and manners with something below 
the dignity of history (a very absurd mistake) ; and 
Hume, of whose philosophy better things might have 
been expected, is notoriously less philosophical in his 
history than in any other of his works. A certain 
coldness of temperament, not unmixed with aristo- 
cratical pride, or at least with a great aversion from 
everything like vulgar credulity, rendered his scepti- 
cism so extreme that it became a sort of superstition 
in turn, and blinded him to the claims of every species 
of enthusiasm, civil as well as religious. Milton, with 
his poetical eyesight, saw better, when he meditated 
the history of his native country. We do not remem- 
ber whether he relates the present story, but we re- 
member well, that at the beginning of his fragment 
on that subject, he says he shall relate doubtful stories 
as well as authentic ones, for the benefit of those, if 
no others, who will know how to make use of them, 
namely, the poets * We have faith, however, in the 

* When Dr. Johnson, among his other impatient accusations 
of our great republican, charged him with telling unwarrantable 
stories in his history, he must have overlooked this announce- 
ment ; and yet, if we recollect, it is but in the second page of 
the fragment. So hasty, and blind, and liable to be put to 
shame, is prejudice. 



GODIVA. 219 

story ourselves. It has innate evidence enough for 
us, to give full weight to that of the old annalist. 
Imagination can invent a good deal ; affection more ; 
but affection can sometimes do things, such as the 
tenderest imagination is not in the habit of inventing ; 
and this piece of noble-heartedness we believe to have 
been one of them. 

Leofric, Earl of Leicester, was the lord of a large 
feudal territory in the middle of England, of which 
Coventry formed a part. He lived in the time of 
Edward the Confessor ; and was so eminently a feudal 
lord, that the hereditary greatness of his dominion 
appears to have been singular, even at that time, and 
to have lasted with an uninterrupted succession from 
Ethelbald to the Conquest — a period of more than 
three hundred years. He was a great and useful op- 
ponent of the famous Earl Godwin. 

Whether it was owing to Leofric or not, does not 
appear, but Coventry was subject to a very oppressive 
tollage, by which it would seem that the feudal despot 
enjoyed the greater part of the profit of all market- 
able commodities. The progress of knowledge has 
shown us how abominable, and even how unhappy for 
all parties, is an injustice of this description ; . yet it 
gives one an extraordinary idea of the mind in those 
times, to see it capable of piercing through the clouds 
of custom, of ignorance, and even of self-interest, and 
petitioning the petty tyrant to forego such a privilege. 
This mind was Godiva's. The other sex, always more 



220 GOD I VA. 

slow to admit reason through the medium of feeling ; 
were then occupied to the full in their warlike habits. 
It was reserved for a woman to anticipate ages of 
liberal opinion, and to surpass them in the daring 
virtue of setting a principle above a custom. 

Godiva entreated her lord to give up his fancied 
right ; but in vain. At last, wishing to put an end to 
her importunities, he told her, either in a spirit of 
bitter jesting, or with a playful raillery that could not 
be bitter with so sweet an earnestness, that he would 
give up his tax, provided she rode through the city 
of Coventry, naked. She took him at his word. One 
may imagine the astonishment of a fierce, unlettered 
chieftain, not untinged with chivalry, at hearing a 
woman, and that too of the greatest delicacy and rank, 
maintaining seriously her intention of acting in a 
manner contrary to all that was supposed fitting for 
her sex, and at the same time forcing upon him a 
sense of the very beauty of her conduct by its prin- 
cipled excess. It is probable, that as he could not 
prevail upon her to give up her design, he had sworn 
some religious oath when he made his promise; but, 
be this as it may, he took every possible precaution to 
secure her modesty from hurt. The people of Coven- 
try were ordered to keep within doors, to close up all 
their windows and outlets, and not to give a glance 
into the streets upon pain of death. The day came ; 
and Coventry, it may be imagined, was silent as death. 
The lady went out at the palace door, was set on horse- 



GO DIVA. 221 

back, and at the same time divested of her wrapping 
garment, as if she had been going into a bath ; then 
taking the fillet from her head, she let down her long 
and lovely tresses, which poured around her body like 
a veil; and so, took her gentle way through the 
streets.* 

What scene can be more touching to the imagi- 
nation! beauty, modesty, feminine softness, a daring 
sympathy ; an extravagance, producing by the noble- 
ness of its object, and the strange gentleness of its 
means, the grave and profound effect of the most 
reverend custom. We may suppose the scene taking 
place in the warm noon ; the doors all shut, the win- 
dows closed; the Earl and his court serious and 
wondering; the other inhabitants, many of them 
gushing with grateful tears, and all reverently listen- 
ing to hear the footsteps of the horse ; and lastly, the 
lady herself, with a downcast, but not a shamefaced 
eye, looking towards the earth through her flowing 
locks, and riding through the dumb and deserted 
streets, like an angelic spirit. 

It was an honourable superstition in that part of the 
country, that a man who ventured to look at the fair 

* " Nuda.' ; says Matthew of Westminster, " equum ascendens, 
crines capitis et tricas dissolvens, corpus suum totum, preeter 
crura candidissima, inde velavit." See Selden's Notes to the 
Polyolbion of Drayton : Song 13. It is Selden from whom we 
learn, that Leofric was Earl of Leicester, and the other particu- 
lars of him mentioned above. The Earl was buried at Coventry ; 
his Countess most probably in the same tomb. 

19* ^ 



222 GOD IV A. 

saviour of his native town, was said to have been 
struck blind. But the use to which this superstition 
has been turned by some writers of late times, is not 
so honourable. The whole story is as sweetly serious 
as can be conceived. 

Drayton has not made so much of this subject as 
might have been expected ; yet what he says is said 
well and earnestly : 

Coventry at length 



From her small mean regard, recovered state and strength ; 
By Leofric her lord, yet in base bondage held, 
The people from her marts by tollage were expelled : 
"Whose duchess which desired this tribute to release, 
Their freedom often begged. The duke, to make her cease, 
Told her, that if she would his loss so far enforce, 
His will was, she should ride stark naked upon a horse 
By daylight through the street: which certainly he thought 
In her heroic breast so deeply would have wrought, 
That in her former suit she would have left to deal: 
But that most princely dame, as one devoured with zeal, 
Went on, and by that mean the city clearly freed. 



OODIVA. 223 



GODIVA. 

BY ALFEED TENNYSON. 

f WAITED for the train at Coventry ; 
I hung with grooms and porters on the bridge, 
To watch the three tall spires ; and there I shaped 
The city's ancient legend into this: — 

Not only we, the latest seed of Time, 
New men, that in the flying of a wheel 
Cry down the past, not only we, that prate 
Of rights and wrongs, have loved the people well, 
And loathed to see them overtax'd; but she 
Did more, and underwent, and overcame, 
The woman of a thousand summers back, 
Grodiva, wife to that grim Earl, who ruled 
In Coventry: for when he laid a tax 
Upon his town, and all the mothers brought 
Their children, clamouring, " If we pay, we starve !" 
She sought her lord, and found him, where he strode 
About the hall, among his dogs, alone, 
His beard a foot before him, and his hair 
A yard behind. She told him of their tears, 
And pray'd him, " If they pay this tax, they starve." 
"Whereat he stared, replying, half- amazed, 
"You would not let your little finger ache 
For such as theseV — "But I would die," said she. 



224 GOD IV A. 

He laugh'd, and swore by Peter and by Paul : 
Then fillip'd at the diamond in her ear; 
"0, ay, ay, ay, you talk!" — "Alas!" she said. 
"But prove me what it is I would not do." 
And from a heart as rough as Esau's hand, 
He answer'd, "Kide you naked thro' the town, 
And I repeal it;" and nodding, as in scorn, 
He parted, with great strides among his dogs. 

So left alone, the passions of her mind, 
As winds from all the compass shift and blow, 
Made war upon each other for an hour, 
Till pity won. She sent a herald forth, 
And bade him cry, with sound of trumpet, all 
The hard condition ; but that she would loose 
The people: therefore, as they loved her well, 
From then till noon no foot should pace the street, 
No eye look down, she passing ; but that all 
Should keep within, door shut, and window barr'd. 

Then fled she to her inmost bower, and there 
Unclasped the wedded eagles of her belt, 
The grim Earl's gift ; but ever at a breath 
She linger'd, looking like a summer moon 
Half-dipt in cloud : anon she shook her head, 
And shower'd the rippled ringlets to her knee ; 
Unclad herself in haste ; adown the stair 
Stole on ; and, like a creeping sunbeam, slid 
From pillar unto pillar, until she reach'd 
The gateway ; there she found her palfrey trapt 
In purple blazon'd with armorial gold. 



GODIVA. 225 

Then she rode forth, clothed on with 'chastity : 
The deep air listen'd round her as she rode, 
And all the low wind hardly breathed for fear. 
The little wide-mouth'd heads upon the spont 
Had cunning eyes to see : the barking cur 
Made her cheek flame : her palfrey's footfall shot 
Light horrors thro' her pulses : the blind walls 
Were full of chinks and holes ; and overhead 
Fantastic gables, crowding, stared ; but she 
Not less thro' all bore up, till, last, she saw 
The white-nower'd elder -thicket from the field 
Gleam through the Gothic archways in the wall. 

Then she rode back, clothed on with chastity : 
And one low churl, compact of thankless earth, 
The fatal byword of all years to come, 
Boring a little augur-hole in fear, 
Peep'd — but his eyes, before they had their will, 
Were shrivell'd into darkness in his head, 
And dropt before him. So the Powers, who wait 
On noble deeds, cancelled a sense misused ; 
And she, that knew not, pass'd : and all at once, 
With twelve great shocks of sound, the shameless 

noon 
Was clash'd and hammer'd from a hundred towers, 
One after one: but even then she gain'd 
Her bower ; whence reissuing, robed and crown'd, 
To meet her lord, she took the tax away, 
And built herself an everlasting name. 



226 YOUTH AND AOE. 



m 



YOUTH AND AGE. 
BY SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 

'ERSE, a breeze mid blossoms straying, 
Where Hope clung feeding, like a bee — 
Both were mine ! Life went a maying 

With Nature, Ilope, and Poesy, 

When I was young! 
When I was young? — Ah, woful when! 
Ah ! for the change 'twixt Now and Then ! 
This breathing house not built with hands, 

This body that does me grievous wrong, 
O'er aery cliffs and glittering sands, 

LTow lightly then it flashed along! 
Like those trim skiffs, unknown of yore 

On winding lakes and rivers wide, 
That ask no aid of sail or oar, 

That fear no spite of wind or tide! 
Naught cared this body for wind or weather 
When Youth and I lived in't together. 

Flowers are lovely ; Love is flower-like ; 

Friendship is a sheltering tree; 
! the joys, that came down shower-like, 

Of Friendship, Love, and Liberty, 

Ere I was old! 



YOUTH AND AGE. 227 

Ere I was old? — Ah, woful Ere, 
Which tells me, Youth's no longer here! 

Youth! for years so many and sweet, 
'Tis known, that thou and I were one; 

I'll think it but a fond conceit — 
It cannot be that thou art gone! 
Thy vesper-bell hath not yet toll'd, 
And thou wert aye a masker bold! 
What strange disguise hast now put on, 
To make believe that thou art gone? 

1 see these locks in silvery slips, 
This drooping gait, this altered size: 

But springtide blossoms on thy lips, 

And tears take sunshine from thine eyes! 
Life is but thought: so think I will 
That Youth and I are house-mates still. 

Dew-drops are the gems of morning, 

But the tears of mournful eve! 
Where no hope is, life's a warning 

That only serves to make us grieve 

When we are old: 
That only serves to make us grieve 
With oft and tedious taking-lea ve ; 
Like some poor nigh-related guest, 
That may not rudely be dismist; 
Yet hath outstayed his welcome while, 
And tells the jest without the smile. 



228 LOVE; OR GENEVIEVE. 

LOVE; OR, GENEVIEVE. 
BY SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 

£jU<DLL thoughts, all passions, all delights, 
A\ Whatever stirs this mortal frame 
All are but ministers of Love, 
And feed his sacred flame. 

Oft in my waking dreams do I 
Live o'er again that happy hour, 

When midway on the mount I lay, 
Beside the ruin'd tower. 

The moonlight stealing o'er the scene, 
Had blended with the lights of eve ; 

And she was there, my hope, my joy, 
My own dear Genevieve ! 

She lean'd against the armed man, 
The statue of the armed knight ; 

She stood and listen'd to my lay, 
Amid the lingering light. 

Few sorrows hath she of her own, 
My hope 1 my joy ! my Genevieve 1 

She loves me best, whene'er I sing 
The songs that make her grieve. 



LOVE; OR, GENEVIEVE. 229 

I play'd a soft and doleful air, 
I sang an old and moving story — 

An old rude song, that suited well 
That ruin wild and hoary. 

She listen'd with a flitting blush, 

"With downcast eyes and modest grace; 

For well she knew, I could not choose 
But gaze upon her face. 

I told her of the knight that wore 

Upon his shield a burning brand; 
And that for ten long years he woo'd 

The Lady of the Land. 

I told her how he pin'd ; and ah ! 

The deep, the low, the pleading tone 
"With which I sang another's love, 

Interpreted my own. 

She listen'd with a flitting blush, 

With downcast eyes and modest grace; 

And she forgave me, that I gazed 
Too fondly on her face! 

But when I told the cruel scorn 

That crazed that bold and lovely knight, 

And that he cross'd the mountain- woods, 

Nor rested day nor night: 
20 



230 LOVE; OR, GENEVIEVE. 

That sometimes from the savage den, 

And sometimes from the darksome shade, 

And sometimes starting up at once 
In green and sunny glade, 

There came and look'd him in the face 
An angel, beautiful and bright; 

And that he knew it was a Fiend, 
This miserable knight! 

And that, unknowing what he did, 
He leap'd amid a murderous band, 

And sav'd from outrage worse than death 
The Lady of the Land ! 

And how she wept and claspt his knees; 

And how she tended him in vain — 
And ever strove to expiate 

The scorn that crazed his brain; 

And that she nurs'd him in a cave ; 

And how his madness went away, 
When on the yellow forest-leaves 

A dying man he lay. 

His dying words — but when I reach'd 
That tender est strain of all the ditty, 

My faltering voice and pausing harp 
Disturb'd her soul with pity 



LOVE; OR, GENEVIEVE. 231 

All impulses of soul and sense 

Had thrill'd my guileless Genevieve; 

The music and the doleful tale, 
The rich and balmy eve; 

And hopes, and fears that kindle hope, 

An undistinguishable throng, 
And gentle wishes long subdued, 

Subdued and cherished long. 

She wept with pity and delight, 

She blush'd with love and virgin- shame ; 

And like the murmur of a dream, 
I heard her breathe my name. 

Her bosom heav'd — she stept aside, 
As conscious- of my look she stept, — 

Then suddenly, with timorous eye, 
She fled to me and wept. 

She half enclos'd me in her arms, 

She press'd me with a meek embrace; 

And bending back her head, look'd up, 
And gazed upon my face. 

'Twas partly love, and partly fear, 

And partly 'twas a bashful art, 
That I might rather feel, than see, 

The swelling of her heart. 



232 THE PALIMPSEST 

I calm'd her fears, and she was calm, 
And told her love with virgin-pride. 

And so I won my Genevieve, 
My own, my beauteous bride. 



THE PALIMPSEST. 
BY THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. 

fOU know perhaps, masculine reader, better than 
I can tell you, what is a Palimpsest. Possibly, 
you have one in your own library. But yet, for the 
sake of others who may not know, or may have for- 
gotten, suffer me to explain it here, lest any female 
reader, who honours these papers with her notice, 
should tax me with explaining it once too seldom ; 
which would be worse to bear than a simultaneous 
complaint from twelve proud men, that I had explained 
it three times too often. You therefore, fair reader, 
understand, that for your accommodation exclusively, 
I explain the meaning of this word. It is Greek ; and 
our sex enjoys the office and privilege of standing 
counsel to yours, in all questions of Greek. We are, 
under favor, perpetual and hereditary dragomans to 
you. So that if, by accident, you know the meaning 
of a Greek word, yet by courtesy to us, your counsel 



TEE PALIMPSEST. 233 

learned in that matter, you will always seem not to 
know it. 

A palimpsest, then, is a membrane or roll cleansed 
of its manuscript by reiterated successions. 

What was the reason that the Greeks and the Eo- 
mans had not the advantage of printed books ? The 
answer will be from ninety-nine persons in a hundred, 
— Because the mystery of printing was not then dis- 
covered. But this is altogether a mistake. The secret 
of printing must have been discovered many thousands 
of times before it was used, or could be used. The 
inventive powers of man are divine; and also his 
stupidity is divine, as Cowper so playfully illustrates 
in the slow development of the sofa through succes- 
sive generations of immortal dulness. It took centu- 
ries of blockheads to raise a joint-stool into a chair ; 
and it required something like a miracle of genius, in 
the estimate of elder generations, to reveal the possi- 
bility of lengthening a chair into a chaise-longue, or a 
sofa. Yes, these were inventions that cost mighty 
throes of intellectual power. But still, as respects 
printing, and admirable as is the stupidity of man, it 
was really not quite equal to the task of evading an 
object which stared him in the face with so broad a 
gaze. It did not require an Athenian intellect to read 
the main secret of printing in many scores of processes 
which the ordinary uses of life were daily repeating. 
To say nothing of analogous artifices amongst various 

mechanic artisans, all that is essential in printing 
20* 



234 TEE PALIMPSEST. 

must have been known to every nation that struck 
coins and medals. Not, therefore, any want of a print- 
ing art, — that is, of an art for multiplying impres- 
sions, — but the want of a cheap material for receiving 
such impressions, was the obstacle to an introduction 
of printed books, even as early as Pisistratus. The 
ancients did apply printing to records of silver and 
gold ; to marble, and many other substances cheaper 
than gold and silver, they did not, since each monu- 
ment required a separate effort of inscription. Simply 
this defect it was of a cheap material for receiving 
impressions, which froze in its very fountains the 
early resources of printing. 

Some twenty years ago, this view of the case was 
luminously expounded by Dr. Whately, the present 
Archbishop of Dublin, and with the merit, I believe, 
of having first suggested it. Since then, this theory 
has received indirect confirmation. Now, out of that 
original scarcity affecting all materials proper for 
durable books, which continued up to times compara- 
tively modern, grew the opening for palimpsests. 
Naturally, when once a roll of parchment or of vellum 
had done its office, by propagating through a series 
of generations what once had possessed an interest for 
them, but which, under changes of opinion or of taste, 
had faded to their feelings or had become obsolete for 
their undertakings, the whole membrana or vellum 
skin, the two-fold product of human skill, costly ma- 
terial, and costly freight of thought, which it carried, 



THE PALIMPSEST. 235 

drooped in value concurrently — supposing that each 
were inalienably associated to the other. Once it had 
been the impress of a human mind which stamped its 
value upon the vellum ; the vellum, though costly, 
had contributed but a secondary element of value to 
the total result. At length, however, this relation 
between the vehicle and its freight has gradually been 
undermined. The vellum, from having been the set- 
ing of the jewel, has risen at length to be the jewel 
itself; and the burden of thought, from having given 
the chief value to the vellum, has now become the 
chief obstacle to its value; nay, has totally extin- 
guished its value, unless it can be dissociated from 
the connection. Yet, if this unlinking can be effected, 
then, fast as the inscription upon the membrane is 
sinking into rubbish, the membrane itself is reviving 
in its separate importance ; and, from bearing a minis- 
terial value, the vellum has come at last to absorb the 
whole value. 

Hence the importance for our ancestors that the 
separation should be effected. Hence it arose in the 
middle ages, as a considerable object for chemistry, to 
discharge the writing from the roll, and thus to make 
it available for a new succession of thoughts. The 
soil, if cleansed from what had once been hot-house 
plants, but now were held to be weeds, would be ready 
to receive a fresh and more appropriate crop. In that 
object the monkish chemist succeeded; but after a 
fashion which seems almost incredible, — incredible 



236 THE PALIMPSEST. 

not as regards the extent of their success, but as re- 
gards the delicacy of restraints under which it moved, 
— so equally adjusted was their success to the imme- 
diate interests of that period, and to the reversionary 

objects of our own. They did the thing; but ik 
radically as to prevent us, their posterity, from undoing 
it. They expelled the writing sufficiently to leave a 
field for the new manuscript, and yet not sufficiently to 
make the traces of the elder manuscript irrecoverable 

for US Had they been better chen. 

had ice been worse, the mixed result, namely, that 
dying for them, the flower should revive for us, could 
not have been effected. They did the tiling prop 
to them; they did it effectually, for they founded upon 
it all that was wanted: and yet ineffectually, since we 
unravelled their work ; effacing all above which they 
had superscribed ; restoring all below w r hich they had 
ed. 
Here, for instance, is a parchment which contained 
some Grecian tragedy, the Agamemnon of ^Eschylus, 
or the Phcenissaa of Euripides. This had possessed a 
value almost inappreciable in the eyes of accomplished 
scholars, continually growing rarer through genera- 
tions. But four centuries are gone by since the des- 
truction of the Western Empire. Christianity, with 
towering grandeurs of another class, has founded a 
different empire ; and some bigoted, yet perhaps holy 
monk, has washed away (as he persuades himself) the 
heathen's tragedy, replacing it with a monastic legend ; 



THE PALIMPSEST. 23T 

which legend is disfigured with fables in its incidents, 
and yet in a higher sense is true, because interwoven 
with Christian morals, and with the sublimest of 
Christian revelations. Three, four, five centuries 
more, find man still devout as ever ; but the language 
has become obsolete, and even for Christian devotion 
a new era has arisen, throwing it into the channel of 
crusading zeal or of chivalrous enthusiasm. The 
rnemhrana is wanted now for a .knightly romance — 
for "my Cid," or Cceur de Lion; for Sir Tristrem, or 
Lybssus Disconus. In this way, by means of the im- 
perfect chemistry known to the mediaeval period, the 
same roll has served as a conservatory for three sepa- 
rate generations of flowers and fruits, all perfectly dif- 
ferent, and yet all specially adapted to the wants of 
the successive possessors. The Greek tragedy, the 
monkish legend, the knightly romance, each has ruled 
its own period. One harvest after another has been 
gathered into the garners of man through ages far 
apart. And the same hydraulic machinery has dis- 
tributed, through the same marble fountains, water, 
milk, or wine, according to the habits and training of 
the generations that came to quench their thirst. 

Such were the achievements of rude monastic chem- 
istry. But the more elaborate chemistry of our own 
days has reversed all these motions of our simple an- 
cestors, which results in every stage that to them 
would have realized the most fantastic amongst the 
promises of thaumaturgy. Insolent vaunt of Para- 



238 THE PALIMPSEST. 

celsus, that he would restore the original rose or violet 
out of the ashes settling from its combustion — that is 
now rivalled in this modern achievement. Even the 
fable of the Phoenix, that secular bird, who propagated 
his solitary existence, and his solitary births, along 
the line of centuries, through eternal relays of funeral 
mists, is but a type of what we have done with Palimp- 
sests. We have backed upon each phoenix in the 
long regressus, and forced him to expose his ancestral 
phcenix, sleeping in the ashes below his own ashes. 
"What else than a natural and mighty palimpsest is 
the human brain? Such a palimpsest is my brain; 
such a palimpsest, oh reader ! is yours. Everlasting 
layers of ideas, images, feelings, have fallen upon your 
brain softly as light. Each succession has seemed to 
bury all that went before. And yet, in reality, not 
one has been extinguished. And if, in the vellum 
palimpsest, lying amongst the other diplomata of human 
archives or libraries, there is anything fantastic or 
which moves to laughter, as oftentimes there is in the 
grotesque collisions of those successive themes, having 
no natural connection, which by pure accident have 
consecutively occupied the roll, yet, in our own heaven- 
created palimpsest, the deep memorial palimpsest of the 
brain, there are not and cannot be such incoherencies. 
The fleeting accidents of a man's life, and its external 
shows, may indeed be irrelate and incongruous ; but 
the organizing principles which fuse into harmony, 
and gather about fixed predetermined centres, what- 



THE PALIMPSEST. 239 

ever heterogeneous elements life may have accumu- 
lated from without, will not permit the grandeur of 
human unity greatly to be violated, or its ultimate 
repose to be troubled, in the retrospect from dying 
moments, or from other great convulsions. 

Yes, reader, countless are the mysterious hand- 
writings of grief or joy which have inscribed them- 
selves successively upon the palimpsest of your brain ; 
and, like the annual leaves of aboriginal forests, or 
the undissolving snows on the Himalaya, or light fall- 
ing upon light, the endless strata have covered up each 
other in forgetfulness. But by the hour of death, but 
by fever, but by the searchings of opium, all these can 
revive in strength. They are not dead, but sleeping. 
In the illustration imagined by myself, from the case 
of some individual palimpsest, the Grecian tragedy 
had seemed to be displaced, but was not displaced, by 
the monkish legend; and the monkish legend had 
seemed to be displaced, but was not displaced by the 
knightly romance. In some potent convulsion of the 
system, all wheels back into its earliest elementary 
stage. The bewildering romance, light tarnished with 
darkness, the semi-fabulous legend, truth celestial 
mixed with human falsehoods, these fade even of 
themselves, as life advances. The romance has per- 
ished that the young man adored ; the legend has 
gone that deluded the boy ; but the deep, deep trage- 
dies of infancy, as when the child's hands were un- 
linked forever from his mother's neck, or his lips for- 



240 ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE. 

ever from his sister's kisses, these remain lurking be- 
low all, and these lurk to the last. Alchemy there is 
none of passion or disease that can scorch away these 
immortal impresses. 



ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE. 

BY JOHN KEATS. 

This poem was written in a house at the foot of Highgate Hill, 
on the border of the fields looking towards Hampstead. The 
poet had then his mortal illness upon him, and knew it. Never 
was the voice of death sweeter. — Leigh Hunt. 

Y heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains 
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, 
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains 

One minute past, and Lethe-ward had sunk. 
>T is not through envy of thy happy lot, 
But being too happy in thy happiness, 

That thou, light- winged Dryad of the trees, 
In some melodious plot 
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, 
Singest of summer in full-throated ease. 

for a draught of vintage, that hath been 
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth, 

Tasting of Flora and the country-green, 

Dance, and Provencal song, and sun-burnt mirth ! 



I 



ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE. 241 

for a beaker full of the warm South, 
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, 
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, 
And purple-stained mouth ; 
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, 
And with thee fade away into the forest dim : 

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget 

What thou among the leaves hast never known, 
The weariness, the fever, and the fret 

Here, where men sit, and hear each other groan ; 
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs, 
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies ; 
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow 
And leaden-eyed despairs; 
Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, 
Or new love pine at them beyond to-morrow. 

Away! away! for I will fly to thee, 

Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, 
But on the viewless wings of Poesy, 

Though the dull brain perplexes and retards ; 
Already with thee! tender is the night, 
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne, 
Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays ; 
But here there is no light, 
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown 
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy 
ways. 

21 



242 ODE TO A LIGHTING ALE. 

I cannot see what flowers are al mv feet, 
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the bdtig 

But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet 

Wherewith the seasonable month endows 
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild; 
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine ; 
Fast-fading violets, eover'd up in leaves; 
And mid-May's eldest child, 
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, 

The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves. 

Darkling* I listen; and, for many a time, 

I have been half in love with easeful Death, 
Call'd him soft names, in many a mused rhyme, 

To take into the air my quiet breath ; 
Now more than ever seems it rich to die, 
To cease upon the midnight with no pain, 

While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad 
In such an ecstacy ! 
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain — 
To thy high requiem become a sod. 

Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird ! 
No hungry generations tread thee down ; 

* Darkling, in the dark. This is a purely poetical word. A 
beautiful illustration of its use occurs in the Paradise Lost 
iii. 39 : 

"As the wakeful bird 

Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid, 
Tunes her nocturnal note." 



TO A LADY WITH A GUITAR. 243 

The voice I hear this passing night was heard 

In ancient days by emperor and clown ; 
Perhaps the self- same song that found a path 

Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, 
She stood in tears amid the alien corn; 
The same that ofttimes hath 
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam 
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. 

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell 

To toll me back from thee to my sole self ! 
Adieu ! the fancy cannot cheat so well 

As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf. 
Adieu ! adieu ! thy plaintive anthem fades 

Past the near meadows, over the still stream, 
Up the hill side ; and now 'tis buried deep 
In the next valley-glades ; 
Was it a vision, or a waking dream? 

Fled is that music : — do I wake or sleep ? 



TO A LADY WITH A GUITAR 
BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 

EIEL to Miranda :— Take 

This slave of music, for the sake 
Of him who is the slave of thee ; 
And teach it all the harmony 



244 TO A LADY WITH A GUITAR 

In which thou canst, and only thou, 

Make the delighted spirit glow, 

Till joy denies itself again, 

And, too intense, is turned to pain. 

For by permission and command 

Of thine own Prince Ferdinand, 

Poor Ariel sends this silent token 

Of more than ever can be spoken : 

Your guardian spirit, Ariel, who 

From life to life must still pursue 

Your happiness, for thus alone 

Can Ariel ever find his own: 

From Prospero's enchanted cell, 

As the mighty verses tell, 

To the throne of Naples he 

Lit you o'er the trackless sea, 

Flitting on, your prow before, t 

Like a living meteor. 

When you die, the silent moon, 

In her interlunar swoon, 

Is not sadder in her cell 

Than deserted Ariel: 

When you live again on earth, 

Like an unseen star of birth,. 

Ariel guides you o'er the sea 

Of life from your nativity. 

Many changes have been run, 

Since Ferdinand and you begun 

Your course of love, and Ariel still 

Has track'd your steps and serv'd your will. 



TO A LADY WITH A GUITAR. 245 

Now in humbler, happier lot, 
This is all remenibe*r'd not; 
And now, alas ! the poor sprite is 
Imprisoned for some fault of his 
In a body like a grave. 
From you, he only dares to crave, 
For his service and his sorrow, 
A smile to-day — a song to-morrow. 

The artist who this idol wrought, 

To echo all harmonious thought, 

Fell'd a tree, while on the steep 

The woods were in their winter sleep, 

Kock'd in that repose divine 

On the wind-swept Apennine : 

And dreaming, some of autumn past, 

And some of spring approaching fast, 

And some of April buds and showers, 

And some of songs in July bowers, 

And all of love : and so this tree — 

that such our death may be ! — 

Died in sleep, and felt no pain, 

To live in happier form again: 

From which, beneath Heaven's fairest star, 

The artist wrought this lov'd Guitar, 

And taught it justly to reply 

To all who question skilfully, 

In language gentle as thine own; 

Whispering in enamour'd tone 
21* 



24G TO A LADY WITH A UU IT AS. 

Sweet oracles of woods and dells, 
And summer winds in sylvan cells; 
For it had learnt all harmonies 
Of the plains and of the skies, 
Of the forests and the mountains, 
And the many -voiced fountains ; 
The clearest echoes of the hills, 
The softest notes of falling rills, 
The melodies of birds and bees, 
The murmuring of summer seas, 
And pattering rain, and breathing dew, 
And airs of evening; and it knew 
That seldom-heard mysterious sound, 
Which, driven on its diurnal round, 
As it floats through boundless day, 
Our world enkindles on its way : — 
All this it knows, but will not tell 
To those who cannot question well 
The spirit that inhabits it; 
It talks according to the wit 
Of its companions: and no more 
Is heard than has been felt before, 
By those who tempt it to betray 
These secrets of an elder day. 
But, sweetly as its answers will 
Flatter hands of perfect skill, 
It keeps its highest, holiest tone 
For our beloved friend alone. 



HE GIVETH HIS BELOVED SLEEP. 247 



"HE GIVETH HIS BELOVED SLEEP."* 
BY ELIZABETH BABRETT BEOWNIKO. 

F all the thoughts of G-od that are 
Borne inward unto souls afar, 
Along the Psalmist's music deep — 
Now tell me if that any is, 
For gift or grace surpassing this, 
"He giveth His beloved sleep." 

What would we give to our beloved? 
The hero's heart, to be unmoved — 

The poet's star-tuned harp, to sweep — 
The senate's shout to patriot vows — 
The monarch's crown to light the brows ? — 

"He giveth His beloved sleep." 

What do we give to our beloved? 
A little faith, all undisproved 

* Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that 
build it : except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh 
but in vain. 

It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the 
bread of sorrow : for so he giveth his beloved sleep. 

Psalm cxxvii. 1, 2. 



248 HE GIVETH HIS BELOVED SLEEP. 

A little dust to overweep — 
And bitter memories to make 
The whole earth blasted for our sake! 

"He giveth His beloved sleep." 

"Sleep soft, beloved!" we sometimes say, 
But have no tune to charm away 

Sad dreams that through the eyelids creep 
But never doleful dream again 
Shall break the happy dumber, when 
"He giveth Bia 

O earth, so full of dreary noi.^ 

O men, with wafting in your voices! 

O delved gold, the wailrrs' heap! 
O strife, O curse, that o'er it fall ! 
God makes a silence through you all, 

And "giveth His beloved sleep." 

His dews drop mutely on the hill; 
His cloud above it saileth still, 

Though on its slope men toil and reap ; 
More softly than the dew is shed, 
Or cloud is floated overhead, 

"He giveth His beloved sleep." 

Ha! men may wonder while they scan 
A living, thinking, feeling man, 



COWPER' S GRAVE , 249 

In such a rest his heart to keep; 
But angels say — and through the word 
I ween their blessed smile is heard — 

" He giveth His beloved sleep !" 

For me, my heart, that erst did go, 
Most like a tired child at a show, 

That sees through tears the juggler's leap — 
Would now its wearied vision close, 
Would childlike on His love repose, 

Who " giveth His beloved sleep !" 

And friends ! — dear friends ! — when it shall be 
That this low breath has gone from me, 

And round my bier ye come to weep — 
Let one, most loving of you all, 
Say, not a tear' must o'er her fall — 

"He giveth His beloved sleep!" 



COWPER' S GRAVE. 
BY ELIZABETH BAEHETT BROWNING, 

T is a place where poets crown'd 
May feel the heart's decaying — 
It is a place where happy saints 
May weep amid their praying — 






250 CO WPER' S QRAY 

Yet let the grief and humbleness, 
As low as silence languish ; 

Earth surely now may give her calm 
To whom she gave her anguish. 

O poets! from a maniac's tongue 

Was pour'd the deathless singing! 
Christians ! at your cross of hope 

A hopeless hand was clinging I 
men ! this man in brotherhood, 

Your weary paths beguiling, 
Groan'd inly while he taught you peace, 

And died while ye were smiling. 

And now, what time ye all may read 

Through dimming tears his story — 
How discord on the music fell, 

And darkness on the glory — 
And how, when, one by one, sweet sounds 

And wandering lights departed, 
He wore no less a loving face, 

Because .so broken-hearted. 

He shall be strong to sanctify 

The poet's high vocation, 
And bow the meekest Christian down 

In meeker adoration; 



CO WPER'S GRAVE. 251 

ISTor ever shall he be in praise 

By wise or good forsaken; 
Named softly as the household name 

Of one whom God hath taken! 



"With sadness that is calm, not gloom, 

I learn to think upon him ; 
With meekness that is gratefulness, 

On God, whose heaven hath won him. 
Who suffered once the madness -cloud 

Towards his love to blind him ; 
But gently led the blind along, 

Where breath and bird could find him; 

And wrought within *his shatter'd brain 

Such* quick poetic senses, 
As hills have language for, and stars 

Harmonious influences! 
The pulse of dew upon the grass 

His own did calmly number ; 
And silent shadow from the trees 

Fell o'er him like a slumber. 

The very world, by God's constraint, 
From falsehood's chill removing, 

Its women and its men became 
Beside him true and loving! 



252 BREAK, BREAK, BREAK. 

And timid hares were drawn from woods 

To share his home- caresses, 
Uplooking to his human eyes, 

With sylvan tendernesses. 

But while in darkness he remain VI, 

Unconscious of the guiding, 
And things provided came without 

The sweet sense of providing, 
He testified this solemn truth, 

Though frenzy desolated — 
Nor man nor nature satisfy 

Whom only God created. 



BREAK, BREAK, BREAK. 
BY ALFRED TENNYSON. 

EEAK, break, break, 
On thy cold gray stones, Seal 
And I would that my tongue could utter 
The thoughts that arise in me. 

O well for the fisherman's boy, 

That he shouts with his sister at play! 
well for the sailor lad, 

That he sings in his boat on the bay! 



THE DREAM OF EUGENE ARAM. 253 

And the stately ships go on 

To their haven under the hill; 
But for the touch of a vanish'd hand, 

And the sound of a voice that is still! 

Break, break, break, 

At the foot of thy crags, Sea! 
But the tender grace of a day that is dead 

"Will never come back to me. 



TEE DREAM OF EUGENE ARAM. 
BY THOMAS HOOD. 

WAS in the prime of summer time, 
An evening calm and cool, 
And four-and-twenty happy boys 
Came bounding out of school: 
There were some that ran and some that leapt, 
Like troutlets in a pool. 

Away they sped with gamesome minds, 

And souls untouch'd by sin ; 
To a level mead they came, and there 

They drave the wickets in : 
Pleasantly shone the setting sun 

Over the town of Lynn. 

22 



254 THE DREAM OF BUQE X E A RAM. 

Like sportive deer they coursed about, 

And shouted as they ran, — 
Turning to mirth all things of earth, 

As only boyhood can ; 
But the Usher sat remote from all, 

A melancholy man ! 



His hat was off, his vest apart, 
To catch heaven's blessed breeze ; 

For a burning thought was in his brow, 
And his bosom ill at ease : 

So he leaned his head on his hands, and read 
The book between his knees! 



Leaf after leaf he turned it o'er, 

Nor ever glanced aside, 
For the peace of his soul he read that book 

In the golden eventide: 
Much study had made him very lean, 

And pale, and leaden-eyed. 



At last he shut the ponderous tome, — 
With a fast and fervent grasp, 

He strained the dusky covers close, 
And fixed the brazen hasp: 
" Oh God ! could I so close my mind, 
And clasp it with a clasp!"' 



THE DREAM OF EUGENE ARAM. 255 

Then, leaping on his feet upright, 

Some moody turns he took ; — 
Now up the mead ; then down the mead, 

And past a shady nook, — 
And, lo ! he saw a little boy 

That pored upon a book! 



"My gentle lad, what is't you read — 
Eomance or fairy fable ? 
Or is it some historic page, 

Of kings and crowns unstable?" 
The young bay gave an upward glance, — 
"It is 'The Death of Abel!"' 



The Usher took .six hasty strides, 
As smit with sudden pain, — 

Six hasty strides beyond the place, 
Then slowly back again ; 

And down he sat beside the lad, 
And talked with him of Cain: 



And, long since then, of bloody men, 
Whose deeds tradition saves; 

Of lonely folk cut off unseen, 
And hid in sudden graves; 

Of horrid stabs, in groves forlorn, 
And murders done in caves; 



256 THE DREAM OF EUGENE ARAM. 

And how the sprites of injured men 
Shriek upward from the sod, — 

Ay, how the ghostly hand will point 
To show the burial clod ; 

And unknown facts of guilty acts 
Are seen in dreams from God ! 



lie told how murderers walk the earth 
Beneath the curse of Cain, — 

With crimson clouds before their eyes, 
And flames about their brain; 

For blood has left upon their souls 
Its everlasting stain ! 



"And well," quoth he, "I know for truth, 
Their pangs must be extreme, — 

Woe, woe, unutterable woe, — 
Who spill life's sacred stream! 

For why ? methought, last night, I wrought 
A murder, in a dream ! 

"One that had never done me wrong — 

A feeble man and old; 
I led him to a lonely field, — 

The moon shone clear and cold: 
Now here, said I, this man shall die, 

And I will have his gold! 



TEE DREAM OF EUGENE ARAM. 25Y 

"Two sudden blows with a ragged stick, 

And one with a heavy stone, 
One hurried gash with a hasty knife, — 

And then the deed was done : 
There was nothing lying at my foot 

But lifeless flesh and bone! 



"Nothing but lifeless flesh and bone, 

That could not do me ill; 
And yet I feared him all the more, 

For lying there so still : 
There was a manhood in his look, 
That murder could not kill! 



"And, lo ! the universal air 

Seem'd lit with ghastly flame ; 
Ten thousand thousand dreadful eyes 

Were looking down in blame : 
I took the dead man by his hand, 
And called upon his name ! 



"Oh, God! it made me quake to see 
Such sense within the slain ! 

But when I touched the lifeless clay, 
The blood gush'd out amain! 

For every clot, a burning spot 
"Was scorching in my brain ! 

22* 



258 THE DREAM OF EUGENE ARAM. 

* My head was like an ardent coal, 

My heart as solid ice; 
My wretched, wretched soul, I knew, 

Was at the Devil's price: 
A dozen times I groaned ; the dead 

Had groaned but twice! 



"And now, from forth the frowning sky, 
From the Heaven's topmost height, 

I heard a voice — the awful voice 
Of the blood-avenging sprite : — 

1 Thou guilty man ! take up thy dead 
And hide it from my sight ! ' 



"I took the dreary body up, 

And cast it in a stream, — 
A sluggish water, black as ink, 

The depth was so extreme : — 
My gentle boy, remember this 

Is nothing but a dream! 

"Down went the corse with a hollow plunge, 

And vanish'd in the pool ; 
Anon I cleansed my bloody hands, 

And washed my forehead cool, 
And sat among the urchins young, 

That evening in the school. 



THE DREAM OF EUGENE ARAM. 259 

"Oh, Heaven! to think of their white souls, 

And mine so black and grim! 
I could not share in childish prayer, 

Nor join in Evening Hymn: 
Like a Devil of the Pit I seemed, 
'Mid holy cherubim ! 



"And peace went with them, one and all, 
And each calm pillow spread ; 

But Guilt was my grim Chamberlain, 
And lighted me to bed; 

And drew my midnight curtains round, 
With fingers bloody red ! 



"All night I lay in agony, 
In anguish dark and deep, 
My fevered eyes I dared not close 

But stared aghast at Sleep: 
For Sin had render'd unto her 
The keys of Hell to keep 

"All night I lay in agony, 
From weary chime to chime, 

With one besetting horrid hint, 
That racked me all the time; 

A mighty yearning, like the first 
Fierce impulse unto crime! 



2C0 THE DREAM OF EUGENE ARAM. 

"One stern tyrannic thought, that made 
All other thoughts its slave; 

Stronger and stronger every pulse 
Did that temptation crave, — 

Still urging me to go and see 
The Dead Man in his gravel 



" Heavily I rose up, as soon 

As light was in the sh 
And sought the black urcursed pool 

"With a wild misgiving eye; 
And I saw the Dead in the river bed, 

For the faithless stream was dry! 



11 Merrily rose the lark, and shook 

The dew-drop from its wing ; 
But I never marked its morning flight, 

I never heard it sing: 
For I was stooping once again 
Under the horrid thing. 



"With breathless speed, like a soul in chase, 
I took him up and ran ; — 
There was no time to dig a grave 

Before the day began ; 
In a lonesome wood, with heaps of leaves, 
I hid the murder'd man ! 



THE DREAM OF EUGENE ARAM. 261 

1 And all that day \ read in school, 

Bnt my thought was other where ; 
As soon as the mid-day task was done, 

In secret I was there : 
And a mighty wind had swept the leaves, 

And still the corse was bare! 



" Then down I cast me on my face, 

And first "began to weep, 
For I knew my secret then was one 

That earth refused to keep : 
Or land, or sea, though he should be 

Ten thousand fathoms deep. 



' So wills the fierce avenging Sprite, 
Till blood for blood atones ! 

Ay, though he's buried in a cave, 
And trodden down with stones, 

And years have rotted off his flesh, • 
The world shall see his bones ! 



" Oh, God ! that horrid, horrid dream 

Besets me now awake ! 
Again — again, with dizzy brain, 

The human life I take; 
And my red right hand grows raging hot, 

Like Cranmers at the stake. 



262 THE PORTRAITS OF 

"And still no peace for the restless clay, 

Will wave or mould allow ; 
The horrid thing pursues my soul, — 

It stands before me now!" 
The fearful Boy look'd up, and saw 

Huge drops upon his brow. 

■ That very night, while gentle sleep 

The urchin eyelids kissed, 
Two stern-faced men set out from Lynn, 

Through the cold and heavy mist; 
And Eugene Aram walked between, 

With gyves upon his wrist. 



THE PORTRAITS OF SUAKSPEARE AND 
GOETHE. 

BY DAVID MASSON.* 

2£)F there are any two portraits which we all expect 
<jE to find hung up in the rooms of those whose 
tastes are regulated by the highest literary culture, 
they are the portraits of Shakspeare and Goethe. 
There are, indeed, many and various gods in our mo- 
dern Pantheon of genius. It contains rough gods and 



* Professor of English Literature in University College, 
London. 



SHAKSPEARE AND GOETHE. 263 

i 

smooth gods, gods of symmetry and gods of strength, 
gods great and terrible, gods middling and respectable, 
and little cnpids and toy-gods. Out of this variety, 
each master of a household will select his own Penates, 
the appropriate gods of his own mantelpiece. The 
roughest will find some to worship them, and the 
smallest shall not want domestic adoration. But we 
suppose a dilettante of the first class ; one who, besides 
excluding from his range of choice the deities of war, 
and cold thought, and civic action, shall further exclude 
from it all those even of the gods of modern literature 
who, whether by reason of their inferior rank, or by 
reason of their peculiar attributes, fail as models of 
universal stateliness. What we should expect to' see 
over the mantelpiece of such a rigorous person, would 
be the images of the English Shakspeare and the Ger- 
man Goethe. On the one side, we will suppose, fixed 
with due elegance against the luxurious crimson of 
the wall, would be a slab of black marble exhibiting 
in relief a white plaster-cast of the face of Shakspeare 
as modelled from the Stratford bust ; on the other, in 
a similar setting, would be a copy, if possible, of the 
mask of Goethe taken at Weimar after the poet's 
death. This would suffice ; and the considerate be- 
holder could find no fault with such an arrangement. 
It is true, reasons might be assigned why a third mask 
should have been added — that of the Italian Dante ; 
in which case Dante and Goethe should have occupied 
the sides, and Shakspeare should have been placed 



264 THE PORTRAITS OF 

higher up between. But the master of the house 
would point out how, in that case, a fine taste would 
have been pained by the inevitable sense of contrast 
between the genial mildness of the two Teutonic faces, 
and the severe and scornful melancholy of the poet 
of the Inferno. The face of the Italian poet, as being 
so different in kind, must either be reluctantly omitted, 
he would say, or transferred by itself to the other side 
of the room. Unless, indeed, with a view to satisfy 
the claims both of degree and of kind, Shakspeare were 
to be placed alone over the mantel-piece, and Dante 
and Goethe in company on the opposite wall, where, 
there being but two, the contrast would be rather 
agreeable than otherwise! On the whole, however, 
and without prejudice to new arrangements in the 
course of future decorations, he is content that it 
should be as it is. 

And so, reader, for the present are we. Let us 
enter together, then, if it seems worth while, the room 
of this imaginary dilettante during his absence ; let us 
turn the key in the lock, so that he may not come in 
to interrupt us ; and let us look for a little time at the 
two masks he has provided for us over the mantel- 
piece, receiving such reflections as they may suggest. 
Doubtless we have often looked at the two masks be- 
fore ; but that matters little. 

As we gaze at the first of the two masks, what is it 
that we see? A face full in contour, of good oval 
shape, the individual features small in proportion to 



SHAKSPEARE AND GOETHE. 265 

the entire countenance, the greater part of which is 
made up of an ample and rounded forehead, and a 
somewhat abundant mouth and chin. The general 
impression is that rather of rich, fine, and very mobile 
tissue, than of large or decided bone. This, together 
with the length of the upper lip, and the absence of 
any set expression, imparts to the face an air of lax 
and luxurious calmness. It is clearly a passive face 
rather than an active face ; a face across which moods 
may pass and repass, rather than a face grooved and 
charactered into any one permanent show of relation 
towards the outer world. Placed beside the mask of 
Cromwell, it would fail to impress, not only as being 
less massive and energetic, but also as being in every 
way less marked and determinate. It is the face, we 
repeat, of a literary man ; one of those faces which 
depend for their power to impress less on the sculptor's 
favourite circumstance of distinct osseous form, than 
on the changing hue and aspect of the living flesh. 
And yet it is, even in form, quite a peculiar face. In- 
stead of being, as in the ordinary thousand and one 
portraits of Shakspeare, a mere general face which 
anybody or nobody might have had, the face in the 
mask (and the singular portrait in the first folio 
edition* of the poet's works corroborates it) is a face 

* Published in 1623, seven years after the poet's death. The 
editors were John Heminge and Henry Condell, his fellow actors. 
The portrait is on the title-page, on a rectangular ground, mea- 
23 



266 Til B PORTRAITS OF 

which every call-boy about the Globe theatre must 
have carried about with him in his imagination, with- 
out any trouble, as specifically Mr. Slinks] ware's face. 
In complexion, as we imagine it, it was rather fair 
than dark ; and yet not very fair either, if we are to 
believe Shakspeare himself, — 

" But when my glass sImws me myself indi 
Beated and chopped with tanned antiquity." 

Sonnet 62. 

a passage, however, in which, from the nature of the 
mood in which it was written, we are to suppose 
exaggeration for the worse. In short, the face of 
Shakspeare, so far ad we can infer what it was from 
the homely Stratford bust, was a genuine and even 
comely, but still unusual English lace, distinguished 
by a kind of ripe intellectual fulness in the general 
outline, comparative smallness in the individual fea- 
tures, and a look of gentle and humane repose. 

Goethe's face is different. The whole size of the 
head is perhaps less, but the proportion of the face to 

suring 7.5x6.3 inches, and on the opposite page the following 
lines by Ben Jonson appear : 

" This Figure, that thou here seest put, 

It was for gentle Shakespeare cut ; 
Wherein the Grauer had a strife 

With Nature, to out-doo the life : 
0, could he but haue drawne his wit 

As well in brasse, as he hath hit 
His face ; the Print would then surpasse 

All, that was euer writ in brasse. 
But, since he cannot, Reader, looke 

Not on his Picture, but his Bookc. — B. L" 



SHAKSPEARE AND GOETHE. 26T 

the head is greater, and there is more of that determi- 
nate form which arises from prominence and strength 
in the bony structure. The features are individually 
larger, and present in their combination more of that 
deliberate beauty of outline which can be conveyed 
with effect in sculpture. The expression, however, is 
also that of calm intellectual repose ; and in the ab- 
sence of harshness or undue concentration of the parts, 
one is at liberty to discover the proof that this also 
was the face of a man whose life was spent rather in 
a career of thought and literary effort than in a career 
of active and laborious strife. Yet the face, with all 
its power of fine susceptibility, is not so passive as 
that of Shakspeare. Its passiveness is more the pas- 
si veness of self-control, and less that of natural consti- 
tution; the susceptibilities pass and repass over a 
firmer basis of permanent character; the tremors 
among the nervous tissues do not reach to such depths 
of sheer nervous dissolution, but sooner make impact 
against the solid bone. The calm in the one face is 
more that of habitual softness and ease -of humour ; 
the cairn in the other, more that of dignified, though 
tolerant self-composure. It would have been more 
easy, we think, to have taken liberties with Shakspeare 
in his presence, than to have attempted a similar thing 
in the presence of Groethe. The one carried himself 
with the air of a man often diffident of himself, and 
whom, therefore, a foolish or impudent stranger might 
very well mistake till he saw him roused ; the other 



M8 TH E If UMBLE-BE E 

wore, with all his kindness and hlandness, a fixed 
stateliness of mien and look that would have chc' 
undue familiarity from the first. Add to all this that 
the face of G in later life, was browner 

and more wrinkled ; his hair more dark ; his eye I 
as we think, nearer the black and lustrous in 
if less mysteriously vague and deep; and his person 
perhaps the taller and more symmetrically made * 



THE HUMBLE-BEE. 
BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON 7 . 

UELY, dozing humble-bee, 
Where thou art is clime for me. 
Let them sail for Porto Eique, 
Far-off heats through seas to seek; 
I will follow thee alone, 
Thou animated torrid-zone! 
Zigzag steerer, desert cheerer, 
Let me chase thy waving lines; 
Keep me nearer, me thy hearer, 
Singing over shrubs and vines. 

* According to Mr. Lewes, in his "Life of Goethe," it is a 
mistake to fancy that Goethe was tall. He seemed taller than 
he really was. 



THE HUMBLE-BEE, 269 

Insect lover of the sun, 
Jo j of thy dominion ! 
Sailor of the atmosphere ; 
Swimmer through the waves of air; 
Voyager of light and noon; 
Epicurean of June ; 
Wait, I prithee, till I come 
Within earshot of thy hum, — 
All without is martyrdom. 

When the south wind, in May days, 

With a net of shining haze 

Silvers the horizon wall, 

And, with softness touching all, 

Tints the human countenance 

With a colour of romance, 

And, infusing subtle heats, 

Turns the sod to violets, 

Thou, in . sunny solitudes, 

Rover of the underwoods, 

The green silence dost displace 

With thy mellow, breezy bass. 

Hot midsummer's petted crone, 

Sweet to me thy drowsy tone 

Tells of countless sunny hours, 

Long days, and solid banks of flowers; 

Of gulfs of sweetness without bound 

In Indian wildernesses found; 

23* 



270 Tin: 11 r u B l e- h ee. 

Of Syrian peace, immortal leisure, 
Firmest cheer, and bird-like pleasure. 

Aught unsavory or unclean 
Hath my insect never seen ; 
But violets and bilberry bells, 
Maple-sap, and dafYodels, 
Grass with green flag half-mast high, 
Succory to match the sky, 
Columbine with horn of honey, 
Scented fern, and agrimony, 
Clover, catchfly, adder's-tongue, 
And brier-roses, dwelt among; 
All beside was unknown waste, 
All was picture as he passed. 

Wiser far than human seer, 
Yellow-breeched philosopher ! 
Seeing only what is fair, 
Sipping only what is sweet, 
Thou dost mock at fate and care, 
Leave the chaff, and take the wheat. 
"When the fierce north-western blast 
Cools sea and land so far and fast, 
Thou already slumberest deep ; 
Woe and want thou canst outsleep ; 
Want and woe which torture us, 
Thy sleep makes ridiculous. 



THE EXECUTION. 271 



THE EXECUTION. 



A SPORTING ANECDOTE. 



BY THOMAS ING-OLDSBY (nom de plume of 

R. HARRIS BARHAM). 

XffTXY Lord Tomnoddy got up one day; 
Owl, It was half after two, 

He had nothing to do, 
So his Lordship rang for his cabriolet. 

Tiger Tim 

Was clean of limb, 
His boots were polish'd, his jacket was trim; 
With a very smart tie in his smart cravat, 
And a smart cockade on the top of his hat ; 
Tallest of boys, or shortest of men, 
He stood in his stockings just four foot ten ; 
And he ask'd, as he held the door on the swing, 
"Pray, did your Lordship please to ring?" 

My Lord Tomnoddy he raised his head, 
And thus to Tiger Tim he said, 

"Malibran's dead, 

Duvernay's fled, 
Taglioni has not yet arrived in her stead; 



2 ^ 2 THE EXECUTION. 

Tiger Tim, come tell me true, 

What may a Nobleman find to do?" — 

Tim look'd up, and Tim look'd down, 

He paused, and lie put on a thoughtful frown, 

And he held up his hat, and he peep'd in the crown; 

He bit his lip, and he scratched his head, 

He let go the handle, and thus he said, 

As the door, released, behind him bang'd : 

'An't please you, my Lord, there's a man to be hang'd." 

My Lord Tomnoddy jnmp'd up at the news, 

"Run to M'Fuze, 

And Lieutenant Tregooze, 
And run to Sir Carnaby Jenks, pf the Blues. 

Rope-dancers a score 

I've seen before — 
Madame Sacchi, Antonio, and Master Black-more- 

But to see a man swing 

At the end of a string 
"With his neck in a noose, will be quite a new thing !" 

My Lord Tomnoddy stept into his cab — 
Dark rifle green, with a lining of drab ; 

Through street and through square, 

His high-trotting mare, 
Like one of Ducrow's, goes pawing the air. 
Adown Piccadilly and Waterloo Place 
Went the high-trotting mare at a very quick pace • 



THE EXECUTION. 2?3 

She produced some alarm, 

But did no great harm, 
Save frightening a nurse with a child on her arm, 

Spattering with clay 

Two urchins at play, 
Knocking down — very much to the sweeper's dismay — 
An old woman who wouldn't get out of the way, 

And upsetting a stall 

Near Exeter Hall, 
Which made all the pious Church-Mission folks squall. 

But eastward afar, 

Through Temple Bar, 
My Lord Tomnoddy directs his car; 

Never heeding tneir squalls, 

Or their calls, or their bawls, 
He passes by Waithman's Emporium for shawls, 
And, merely just catching a glimpse of St. Paul's, 

Turns down the Old Bailey, 

Where in front of the gaol, he 
Pulls up at the door of the gin-shop, and gaily 
Cries, "What must I fork out to-night, my trump, 
For the whole first-floor of the Magpie and Stump ?" 
# # # # 

The clock strikes Twelve — it is dark midnight — 
Yet the Magpie and Stump is one blaze of light. 

The parties are met; 

The tables are set ; 
There is "punch," " vo\<L without" "hot with" "heavy 

wet," 



274 THE i:x RO V Tl 

Ale-glasses and jugs. 

And rummers and mugs, 
And sand on the floor, without carpets or rugs, 

Cold fowl and cigars, 

Pickled onions in jars, 
Welsh rabbits and kidneys — rare work for the jaws I— 
And very large lobsters, with very large claws ; 

And there is M'Fuze, 

And Lieutenant Tregooze, 
And there is Sir Carnaby Jenks, of the Blues, 
All come to see a man "die in his shoes!" 

The clock strikes One! 

Supper is done, 
Aad Sir Carnaby Jenks is full of his fun, 
Singing "Jolly companions every one!" 

My Lord Tomnoddy 

Is drinking gin-toddy, 
And laughing at every thing, and every body. 
The clock strikes Two ! and the clock strikes Three ! 
— " Who so merry, so merry as we ?" 

Save Captain M'Fuze, 

Who is taking a snooze, 
While Sir Carnaby Jenks is busy at work, 
Blacking his nose with a piece of burnt cork. 

The clock strikes Four! — 
Bound the debtors' door 
Are gather'd a couple of thousand or more ; 



THE EXECUTION. 275 

As many await 

At the press-yard gate, 
Till slowly its folding doors open, and straight 
The mob divides, and between their ranks 
A wagon comes loaded with posts and with planks. 

The clock strikes Five ! 

The Sheriffs arrive, 
And the crowd is so great that the street seems alive ; 

But Sir Carnaby Jenks 

Blinks, and winks, 
A candle burns down in the socket, and sinks. 

Lieutenant Tregooze 

Is dreaming of Jews, 
And acceptances all the bill-brokers refuse; 

My Lord Tomnoddy 

Has drunk all his toddy, 
And just as the dawn is beginning to peep, 
The whole of the party are fast asleep. 

Sweetly, oh! sweetly, the morning breaks, 

"With roseate streaks, 
Like the first faint blush on a maiden's cheeks ; 
Seem'd as that mild and clear blue sky 
Smiled upon all things far and nigh, 
On all — ■ save the wretch condemn'd to die ! 
Alack! that ever so fair a Sun 
As that which its course has now begun, 
Should rise on such a scene of misery! — 



276 THE EXECUTION. 

Should gild with rays so light and free 
That dismal, dark-frowning Gallows-tree! 



And hark! — a sound comes, big with (ate; 

The clock from St. Sepulchre's tower strikes — Eight! 

List to that low funereal bell: 

It is tolling, alas! a living mini's knell I — 

And see! — from forth that opening door 

They come — III-; steps thai threshold o'er 

Who ne'er shall tread upon threshold more! 

— God ! 'tis a fearsome thing to see 
That pale wan man's mule agony, — 
The glare of that wild, despairing eye, 

Now bent on the crowd, now turned to the sky, 
As though 'twere scanning, in doubt and in fear, 
The path of the Spirit's unknown career; 
Those pinion'd arms, those hands that ne'er 
Shall be lifted again, — not even in prayer ; 
That heaving chest! — Enough — 'tis done! 
The bolt has fallen ! — the spirit is gone — 
For weal or for woe is known but to One ! 

— Oh ! 'twas a fearsome sight ! — Ah me ! 
A deed to shudder at, — not to see. 

Again that clock ! 'tis time, 'tis time ! 
The hour is past : with its earliest chime 
The cord is severed, the lifeless clay 
By " dungeon villains " is borne away : 



THE EXECUTION. 211 

Nine! — 'twas the last concluding stroke I 
And then — my Lord Tomnoddy awoke ! 
And Tregooze and Sir Carnaby Jenks arose, 
And Captain M'Fuze, with the black on his nose : 
And they stared at each other, as much as to say 
"Hollo! Hollo! 

Here's a rum Go ! 
Why, Captain ! — my Lord ! — Here's the devil to pay ! 
The fellow's been cut down and taken away ! 

"What's to be done? 

We've miss'd all the fun ! — 
Why, they'll laugh at and quiz us all over the town : 
We are all of us done so uncommonly brown I" 

What was to be done ? — 'twas perfectly plain 
That they could not well hang the man over again : 
What was to be done ? — The man was dead I 
Nought could be done!- — nought could be said; 
So — my Lord Tomnoddy went home to bed ! 



The following communication will speak for itself: 

"On their own actions modest men are dumbl" 
24 



278 A DEAD 1 



A DEAD I 

BY ELIZABETH BARRETT BROW.VIN 

J} ROSE ! who dares to name ii 

y longer roseate DOW, nor soft, nor sweet; 
But pale, and hard, and dry as stubble- wheat. — 
Kept seven yean in a dr thy titles shame 

thee. 

The breeze that used to blow thee 
Between the hedge-row thorns, and take away 
An odour up the lane, to last all day, — 

If breathing now — unsweeten'd would forego thee. 

The sun that used to smite thee, 
And mix his glory in thy gorgeous urn, 
Till beam appear'd to bloom and flower to burn, — 

If shining now — with not a hue would light thee. 

The dew that used - "iee, 

And, white first, grew incarnadined, because 
It lay upon thee where the crimson was. — 

If dropping now — would darken where it met thee. 

The fly that lit upon t". 
To stretch the tendrils of its tiny feet 
Along thy leaf 's pure edge- eat. — 

If lighting now — would coldly overrun thee. 



: ~ z i v r_i V'.vzi. 

The bee that once did suck thee, 
And build thy perfumed ambers up his hive 
And swoon in thee for joy, till scarce ;."_: ~e. — 

If passing now — would blindly overlook thee. 

The heart doth recognize thee, 
Alone, alone! The heart doth smell thee sweety 
Doth view thee fair, doth jndge thee most complete, 

Thongh seeing now those changes that disguise thee. 

Yea ind the heart dotl dwc thee 
More love, dead rose, than to such roses bold 
As Julia wears at dances smiling sold! — 

Lie still npon this heart, which breaks below thee ! 



QABDEN faxcizs. 

BY EOBEET BBOWVIKG. 

Sf& HUE'S the garden she walked across, 

^31 Arm in my arm, such short while since: 

Hark, now I push its wicket, the moss 

Hinders the hinges and makes them wince ! 
She must have reached this shrub ere she turned, 

As back with that murmur the wicket swm: ± 
Fox she laid the poor snail, nrr _ _ ae : : : s irned, 

To feed and forget it the leaves among. 



280 GARDEN FANCIES. 

Down this side of the gravel -walk 

She went while her robe's edge brushed the box 
And here she paused in her gracious talk, 

To point mc a moth on the milk-white flox. 
Roses, ranged in valiant row, 

I will never think that she passed you by! 
She loves you, noble rosea, I know: 

But yonder, see, where the rock-plants lie! 



This flower she stopped at, finger on lip, 

Stooped over, in doubt, as settling its claim; 
Till she gave me, with pride to make no slip, 

Its soft meandering Spanish name. 
Whut a name! was it love or praise? 

Speech half-asleep, or song half-awake? 
I must learn Spanish, one of these days, 

Only for that slow sweet name's sake. 



Roses, if I live and do well, 

I may bring her, one of these days, 

To fix you fast with as fine a spell, 
Fit you each with his Spanish phrase! 

But do not detain me now; for she lingers 
There, like sunshine over the ground, 

And ever I see her soft white fingers 
Searching after the bud she found. 



CHAUCER. 281 

Flower, you Spaniard, look that yon grow not, 

Stay as yon are, and be loved for ever ! 
But, if I kiss yon, 'tis that yon blow not, 

Mind, the shut pink mouth opens never ! 
For while thus it pouts, her fingers wrestle, 

Twinkling the audacious leaves between, 
Till round they turn and down they nestle — 

Is not the dear mark still to be seen? 

Where I find her not, beauties vanish ; 

Whither I follow her, beauties flee ; 
Is there no method to tell her in Spanish, 

June's twice June since she breathed it with me ? 
Come, bud, show me the least of her traces, 

Treasure my lady's lightest foot-fall, 
Ah, you may flout and turn up your faces — 

Eoses, you are not so fair after all ! 



CHA UCER. 
BY HIE AM CORSON. 

HE comparatively few obsolete words which are 
sprinkled over the surface of Chaucer's pages, 
together with his antiquated orthography, have de- 
terred many from attacking what appeared at first 

sight to require more time and study to master than 
24* 



282 CHA UCER. 

they were able to bestow. The old poet 1ms accord- 
ingly been entirely neglected by some, while others 
have taken up with modernized versions of his works. 
But the true spirit of his poetry can be reached only 
through its original language, and not through mod- 
ernized versions, which convey, however well done, 
no adequate conception of its subtler elements. The 
life, the soul of all poetry, is inseparable from its 
form, and this Is especially true of Chaucer's poetry. 
"What is addressed to the insulated*understanding can 
be equal])- well expressed in any cultivated langui 
but poetry, whose domain is the sensibilities, owes its 
peculiar potency to the form in which it was originally 
conceived by the poet's imagination. Divorced from 
this, its essence evaporates, and but little more remains 
than the mere thought which is secreted in it, and which 
by itself is not poetry at all. Another serious loss 
incurred by resorting to modernized versions, is the 
valuable knowledge to be derived from the original, 
of the roots and formation of our noble tongue, which 
" in force, in richness, in aptitude for all the highest 
purposes of the poet, the philosopher, and the orator, 
is inferior to that of Greece alone/' 

To possess an intimate acquaintance with the poetry 
of Geoffrey Chaucer, in its original form, is the duty, 
as it is one of the high privileges, of every cultivated 
Englishman and Anglo-American, who would know 
the elements, resources, and capabilities of his native 
language. Five hundred years and more have passed 



CHA TJCER. 283 

since Chaucer commenced to write, and four hundred 
and sixty-three years, this October, since his death in 
the concluding year of the fourteenth century. During 
this period, English literature has been enriched by 
immortal works of genius, that have eclipsed the 
masterpieces of all other literatures, both ancient and 
modern ; and yet, at this hour, Greofrrey Chaucer, who 
wrote with no native models before him, and who, out 
of a semi-barbarous medley of Saxon and Norman 
French, was obliged to mould his language and poetic 
forms, continues to rank with the greatest poets and 
literary princes of his country. He has lost nothing, 
but rather gained, by the increase of civilization and 
culture. He has more readers in the present genera- 
tion than in any previous one ; and his language and 
the secrets of his harmonies are now perhaps better 
understood and appreciated than they were even in 
the reign of Elizabeth, which was nearer by almost 
three centuries to his own times. 

It was long the fashion among Chaucer's critics to 
deny him any claims to being regarded as a melodious 
versifier, while fully admitting the superior quality of 
his matter — his robust understanding, his deep insight 
into human character, his wide knowledge of the 
world, and his profound sympathy with all the forms 
of nature and of human life. 

In the Preface to his Fables from Boccaccio and 
Chaucer, Dryden professes to hold the old bard in the 
same degree of veneration as the Grecians held Homer 



284 CIIA UCER. 

and the Komans Virgil. But, after bestowing upon 
him the highest praise, in respect fco hie use, 

his speaking properly on all subjects, knowing what 
to say and when to leave oil) following everywhere, 
without overstepping the modesty of, nature, he places 
above his numerous and subtle versification, the Life- 
less, syllabical, see-saw uniformity of Waller and Urn- 
ham ! "Our numbers/ 1 he were in their nonage 
till these last appeared." Who, at this day, would 
exchange, in point of poetic form and musical ex] 
Biveness, Chance dsite description of a May 
morning — short as it is — for all the negative harmony 
of a Waller? 

The accentuation of the English of the fourteenth 
( try was far different from the accentuation of the 
ish of the nineteenth, and even of the sixteenth, 
se\ mteenth, and eighteenth centuries; and to the 
reader, who is ignorant of this fact, and who endea- 
\ rs to make Chaucer's verse conform to the ac 
tuation of his own times, it will indeed appear hob- 
bling and unmusical. 

AVhoever makes the most cursory survey of English 
poetry will not fail to observe, if he observes anything, 
that the tendency of English accentuation has been to 
get as far back in words as it is possible for it to go. 
This tendency has continued quite active even since 
the days of Spenser, and Shakspeare, and Milton. 
These great poets, by their transcendent works, con- 
tributed much towards fixing the accentuation of the 



CHAUCER. 285 

language ; but the struggle between the Saxon and 
Norman element; which had been going on for three 
centuries, was not yet over when they wrote, and the 
introduction of certain words into passages of the 
most concentrated energy was not sufficient to rescue 
them from the characteristic stamp of the more vigor- 
ous Saxon — their accentuation was afterwards thrown 
a syllable farther back, and rendered in consequence 
more percussive than it had been under Norman sway. 
It is very evident that in Chaucer's time the great 
majority of Norman words still retained their original 
accentuation, and continued to do so until their foreign 
origin ceased to be any longer recognized, when their 
naturalization was rendered complete by a shifting of 
the accent in accordance with the Saxon tendencies of 
the language. So that wherever in Chaucer it is ne- 
cessary to accent a Norman word on the ultimate in 
order to preserve the iambic movement of his verse, 
we may reasonably conclude, not that it was a poetic 
license with him, but that he followed the prevailing 
accentuation of his time, at any rate, the accentuation 
of the higher society in which he moved and for which 
he wrote. 

The question that has been raised and discussed by 
several critics, as to whether Chaucer's versification 
was governed by syllabic laws, is one that is worthy 
of but little attention at the present day, when it is 
more usual to read Chaucer than to talk about him. 
No one who reads Chaucer needs to be told that regular 



286 CIIA UCER. 

syllabication is the rule of Lis verse. By a regular 
syllabication we would not be understood to mean an 
unvarying alternation of light and heavy syllables. 
Such lifeless formality docs not meet the varying de- 
mands of genuine feeling, which exhibits itself, now 
in long-drawn time and now in an accelerated move- 
ment, and in every variety of pause, emphasis, and 
cadence. 

Accordingly, we find in the highest forms of Eng- 
lish heroic verse, Milton's for example, and Tennyson's, 
that while the poet preserves the regular number of 
heavy or accented syllables, namely, five, there will 
frequently be a hurrying and crowding of light or 
unaccented ones, resulting in trochees, dactyls, and 
anapaests, instead of the regular iambus. But such 
variety, to be a beauty and a merit, must be organic, 
and not mechanical ; it must be expressive of, and in- 
spired by, ever- varying emotion, otherwise, an unin- 
terrupted iambic movement is preferable. It would 
be claiming too much, perhaps, for Chaucer's verse, 
to attribute an ajsthetical and musical motive, even 
generally, to his .departures from the fundamental 
foot; but his poetry exhibits numerous such depar- 
tures that the appreciative reader must at once recog- 
nize as having been dictated by the poet's inspiration 
and feeling. 

The first thing to which the attention of a reader is 
likely to be called who takes up Chaucer for the first 
time, and without any knowledge of the syllabication 



CHAUCER. 28T 

of his language, is the apparent deficiency of his verses. 
Many will appear to him, to use Dryden's expression, 
" lame for want of half a foot, and sometimes a whole 
one." But it will rarely happen that a verse will ap- 
pear redundant. This fact alone should have awakened 
suspicion in Dr. Nott* and his followers, as to the 
soundness of his theory that the principle of Chaucer's 
verse is rhythmical and not metrical. For if not met- 
rical, why should it not as frequently exhibit excess 
as deficiency ? We would, in fact, in such case, expect 
the redundant verses to predominate. But, with such 
verses, the inexperienced reader is seldom troubled. 
His difficulty consists in filling out the measure — a 
difficulty arising almost wholly from the fact that 
many terminations, now mute, regularly constituted a 
light syllable in Chaucer's time. 

Furthermore, in Chaucer's day, language was not so 
entirely divorced from music as it now is. Poetry 
continued to be recited by minstrels, with a musical 
accompaniment, and they, no doubt, gave the character 
to the general enunciation of metrical compositions. 
It must, have approximated a chant, which developed 
all the vocality of the verses, and rendered metrically 

* The subject of Chaucer's verse is treated at considerable 
length by Dr. Nott, in his Dissertation on the state of English 
Poetry before the fifteenth century, prefixed to his edition of the 
Works of the Earl of Surrey, (London, 1815,) whom he regards, 
very absurdly, as the introducer of the heroic verse into English 
poetry. 



288 CnAUCER. 

complete what, in our snappish or barking mode of 
speech, appears defective. 

That Chaucer possessed a most keen and delicate 
metrical sensibility, the habitual and appreciative 
reader of his poetry cannot long fail to discover. No 
English poet has exhibited a nicer feeling of the sug- 
gestiveness of words, or understood better the secrets 
of melody as depending upon the succession of vowel 
sound. Thousands are the verses in his poetry whose 
mysterious beauty, in this respect, causes the reader 
to linger upon them with a secret and undeflnable 
pleasure. 

Warton, in his History of English Poetry, pro- 
nounces Dryden's version of Chaucer's Knight's Tale 
of Palamon and Arcite, to be "the most animated and 
harmonious piece of versification in the English lan- 
guage." But the reader who will take the pains to 
make a careful comparison of the version with the 
original, will not be long in deciding in favour of the 
latter in respect to all the subtler elements of poetic 
form. 

There is scarcely a passage in the whole poem within 
the compass of ten verses that Dryden has not emas- 
culated and vulgarized. Pope, in his versions, falls 
still further below his original. He gives us even less 
of Chaucer's spirit than, in his translation of the Iliad 
and Odyssey, he does of Homer's. It is not to these 
" mechanically perfect " versifiers that we must go for 



^TRIBULATIONS 289 

pure draughts of the fountain-head of English poetry. 

Neither was close enough to the heart of nature, or 

free enough from the artificial and the conventional, 

to respond to, and reproduce, what had had its genesis 

in a soul of such exquisite sensibility and simplicity 

as was Chaucer's. 
******* 

The noble stream of English poetry rejoices in a 
most copious fountain-head. At its source we find 
"the golden gorge of dragons spouting forth a flood 
of fountain foam." Then, as if denying its sweet 
waters to unworthy generations, it flows under ground, 
but reappears, with increased force, to sparkle beneath 
the smiles of a virgin queen. Since then, its waters 
have continued to flow uninterruptedly onward, gain- 
ing in volume, in purity, and in health-giving power, 
and now bear upon their broad expanse, " argosies of 
magic sails." 



"TRIBULATION"— THE ETYMOLOGY OF 
THE WORD. 

BY RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH. 

f LI ADS without an Homer, some one has called, ^ 
with a little exaggeration, the beautiful but 
anonymous ballad poetry of Spain. One may be 
permitted, perhaps, to push the exaggeration a little 

25 



290 "TRIBULATION." 

further in the same direction, and to apply the same 
language not merely to a ballad but to a word. Let 
me illustrate my meaning somewhat more at length 
by the word " tribulation." We all know in a general 
way that this word, which occurs not seldom in Scrip 
ture and in the Liturgy, means affliction, sorrow, 
anguish; but it is quite worth our while to know how 
it means this, and to question the word a little closer. 
It is derived from the Latin " tribulum," which was 
the threshing instrument, or roller, whereby the Ro- 
man husbandman separated the corn from the husks; 
and " tribulatio" in its primary significance was the art 
of this separation. But some Latin writer of the Chris- 
tian church appropriated the word and image for the 
setting forth of an higher truth ; and sorrow, distress, 
and adversity being the appointed means for the sepa- 
rating in men of whatever in them was light, trivial, 
and poor, from the solid and the true, their chaff from 
their wheat, therefore he called these sorrows and 
trials "tribulations," threshings, that is, of the inner 
spiritual man, without which there could be no fitting 
him for the heavenly garner. Now in proof of my 
assertion that a single word is often a concentrated 
poem, a little grain of gold capable of being beaten 
out into a broad extent of gold-leaf, I will quote, in 
reference to this very word " tribulation," a graceful 
composition by George Wither, an early English poet, 
which you will at once perceive is all wrapped up in 
this word, being from first to last only the expanding 



" TRIB ULA TION." 291 

of the image and thought which this word has im- 
plicitly given ; these are his lines : 

" Till from the straw, the flail, the corn doth beat, 
Until the chaff be purged from the wheat, 
Yea, till the mill the grains in pieces tear, 
The richness of the flour will scarce appear. 
So, till men's persons great afflictions touch, 
If worth be found, their worth is not so much, 
Because, like wheat in v straw, they have not yet 
That value which in threshing they may get. 
For till the bruising flails of God's corrections 
Have threshed out of us our vain affections ; 
Till those corruptions which do misbecome us 
Are by thy sacred spirit winnowed from us ; 
Until from us the straw of wordly treasures, 
Till all the dusty chaff of empty pleasures, 
Yea, till His flail upon us He doth lay, 
To thresh the husk of this our flesh away; 
And leave the soul uncovered ; nay, yet more, 
Till Grod shall make our very spirit poor, 
We shall not up to highest wealth aspire ; 
But then we shall ; and that is my desire." 

This deeper religious use of the word " tribulation" 
was unknown to classical, that is to heathen, antiquity, 
and belongs exclusively to the Christian writers : and 
the fact that the same deepening and elevating of the 
use of words recurs in a multitude of other, and many 



292 JUNE. 

of them far more striking, instances, is one well de- 
serving to be followed up. Nothing, I am persuaded, 
would more strongly bring before us what a new power 
Christianity was in the world than to compare the 
meaning which so many words possessed before its 
rise, and the deeper meaning which they obtained, so 
soon as they were assumed by it as the vehicles of its 
life, the nr\v thought and feeling enlarging, purifying, 
and ennobling the very words which they employed. 



JUNE. 

FROM TIIE "PRELUDE" TO "THE VISION OF SIR 

LAUNFAL." 

BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

jOT only around our infancy 
Doth heaven with all its splendours lie ; * 
Daily, with souls that cringe and plot, 
We Sinais climb and know it not; 
Over our manhood bend the skies; 

Against our fallen and traitor lives 
The great winds utter prophecies ; 

With our faint hearts the mountain strives ; 

* "Heaven lies about us in our infancy." — Wordsworth. 



JUNE. 293 

Its arms outstretched, the druid wood 

Waits with its benedicite ; 
And to our age's drowsy blood 

Still shouts the inspiring sea. 

Earth gets its price for what Earth gives us ; 

The beggar is taxed for a corner to die in, 
The priest hath his fee who comes and shrives us, 

"We bargain for the graves we lie in; 
At the Devil's booth are all things sold, 
Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold; 

For a cap and bells our lives we pay, 
Bubbles we earn with a whole soul's tasking : 

'Tis heaven alone that is given away, 
'Tis only God may be had for the asking; 
There is no price set on the lavish summer, 
And June may be had by the poorest comer. 

And what is so rare as a day in June? 

Then, if ever, come perfect days ; 
Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune, 

And over it softly her warm ear lays : 
Whether we look, or whether we listen, 
We hear life murmur, or see it glisten ; 
Every clod feels a stir of might, 

An instinct within it that reaches and towers, 
And, grasping blindly above it for light, 

Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers; 
25* 



294 JUNE. 

The flush of life may well be seen 

Thrilling back over hills and valleys ; 
The cowslip startles in meadows green, 

The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice, 
And there's never a leaf or a blade too mean 

To be some happy creature's palace ; 
The little bird sits at his door in the sun, 

Atilt like a blossom among the leaves, 
And lets his illumined being o'errun 

With the deluge of summer it receives; 
His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings, 
And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings; 
He sings to the wide world, and .she to her nest, — 
In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best? 

Now is the high-tide of the year, 

And whatever of life hath ebbed away 
Comes flooding back, with a ripply cheer, 

Into every bare inlet and creek and bay ; 
Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it, 
We are happy now because God so wills it ; 
No matter how barren the past may have been, 
'Tis enough for us now that the leaves are green ; 
We sit in the warm shade and feel right well 
How the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell ; 
We may shut our eyes, but we cannot help knowing 
That skies are clear, and grass is growing ; 
The breeze comes whispering in our ear, 
That dandelions are blossoming near, 

That maize has sprouted, that streams are flowing, 



JUNE. 295 

That the river is bluer than the sky, 
That the robin is plastering his honse hard by ; 
And if the breeze kept the good news back, 
For other couriers we should not lack ; 

We could guess it all by yon heifer's lowing, — 
And hark ! how clear bold chanticleer, 
"Warmed with the new wine of the year, 

Tells all in his lusty crowing! 

Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how ; 
Everything is happy now, 

Everything is upward striving; 
'Tis as easy now for the heart to be true, 
As for grass to be green, or skies to be blue, — 

'Tis the natural way of living: 
Who knows whither the clouds have fled ? 

In the unscarred heaven they leave no wake ; 
And the eyes forget the tears they have shed, 

The heart forgets its sorrow and ache ; 
The soul partakes the season's youth, 

And the sulphurous rifts of passion and woe 
Lie deep 'neath a silence pure and smooth, 

Like burnt- out craters healed with snow. 



THE VOICELESS. 



THE VOICELESS. 
BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 



W 



-E count the broken lyres t licit rest 
Where the sweet wailing singers slumber, 
But o'er their silent sister's breast 

The wild flowers who will stoop to number? 
A few can touch the magic string, 

And noisy Fame is proud to win them ; — 
Alas for those that never sing, 

But die with all their music in them! 

Kay, grieve not for the dead alone 

Whose song has told their hearts' sad story, — 
Weep for the voiceless, who have known 

The cross without the crown of glory ! 
Not where Leucadian breezes sweep 

O'er Sappho's memory-haunted billow, 
But where the glistening night-dews weep 

On nameless sorrow's churchyard pillow. 

hearts that break and give no sign 
Save whitening lip and fading tresses, 

Till Death pours out his cordial wine 

Slow-dropped from Misery's crushing presses,— 



THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS. 29? 

If singing breath or echoing chord 
To every hidden pang were given, 

"What endless melodies were poured, 
As sad as earth, as sweet as heaven! 



THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS. 

BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 

^J? HIS is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, 
\fc) Sails the unshadowed main, — 
The venturous bark that flings 
On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings 
In gulfs enchanted, where the siren sings, 

And coral reefs lie bare, 
Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming 
hair. 

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl ; 

Wrecked is the ship of pearl ! 

And every chambered cell, 
Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell, 
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell, 

Before thee lies revealed, — 
Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed ! 

Year after year beheld the silent toil 
That spread his lustrous coil; 



298 TIIE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS. 

Still ; as the spiral grew, 
He left the past year's dwelling for the new, 
Stole with soft step its shining archway through, 

Built up its idle door, 
Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no 
more. 

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee, 

Child of the wandering sea, 

Cast from her lap forlorn ! 
From thy dead lips a clearer note is born 
Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn! 

While on mine ear it rings, 
Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that 



Build thee more stately mansions, my soul, 

As the swift seasons roll! 

Leave thy low-vaulted past! 
Let each new temple, nobler than the last, 
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, 

Till thou at length art free, 
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea ! 



THE PANTHER. 299 



THE PANTHER. 



BY LEIGH HUNT 



[This poem is "based upon a passage in the Life of Apollonius 
of Tyana, where it is said that the panthers, delighting in odours, 
which they scent at a great distance, quit Armenia, and cross 
the mountains in search of the tears of the storax^ at the time 
when the wind blows from that quarter, and the trees distil their 
gums. It is said that a panther was once taken in Pamphylia, 
with a gold chain about his neck, on which was inscribed, in 
Armenian letters, " Arsaces the King to the Nysian God." 
Arsaces was then King of Armenia, who is supposed to have 
given him his liberty on account of his magnitude, and in honour 
of Bacchus, who, amongst the Indians, is called Nysius, from 
Nysa, one of their towns (this, however, is an appellation which 
he bears among all the oriental nations) : this panther became 
subject to man, and grew so tame, that he was petted and caressed 
by every one. But on the approach of Spring, he felt the gene- 
ral passion, and rushed with fury into the mountains in quest 
of a mate, with the gold chain about his neck.] 



£^f HE Panther leap'd to the front of his lair, 
\&) And stood with a foot up ; and snufT'd the air ; 
He quiver'd his tongue from his panting month, 
And look'd with a yearning towards the Sonth ; 
For he scented afar in the coming breeze 
News of the gums and their blossoming trees ; 
And out of Armenia that same day 
He and his race came bounding away, 



300 THE PA XT HER. 

Over the mountains and down the plains 
Like Bacchus's panthers with wine in their veins, 
They came where the woods wept odorous rains ; 
And there, with a quivering, every beast 
Fell to his old Pamphylian feast. 

The people who lived not far away, 

Heard the roaring on that same day; 

And they said, as they lay in their carpeted rooms, 

" The panthers are come and are drinking the gums I" 

And some of them going with swords and spears 

To gather their share of the rich round tears, 

The panther I spoke of followed them back, 

And dumbly they let him tread close in the track, 

And lured him after them into the town, 

And then they let the portcullis down 

And took the panther, which happened to be 

The largest was seen in all Pamphily. 

By every one there was the panther admired, 
So fine was his shape, and so sleekly attired, 
And such an air, both princely and swift, 
He had, when giving a sudden lift 
To his mighty paw, he'd turn at a sound, 
And so stand panting and looking around, 
As if he attended a monarch crowned. 
And truly, they wondered the more to behold 
About his neck a collar of gold, 



THE PANTHER. 301 

On which was written, in characters broad, 
"Aksaces the King to the Nysian god." 
So they tied to the collar a golden chain, 
"Which made the panther a captive again ; 
And by degrees he grew fearful and still, 
As though he had lost his lordly will. 

But now came the Spring, when free-born Love 

Calls up nature in forest and grove, 

And makes each thing leap forth, and be 

Loving, and lovely, and blithe as he. 

The Panther he felt the thrill of the air, 

And he gave a leap up, like that at his lair ; 

He felt the sharp sweetness more strengthen his veins 

Ten times, than ever the spicy rains, 

And ere they're aware, he has burst his chains : 

He has burst his chains, and ah, ha ! he is gone, 

And the links and the gazers are left alone, 

And off to the mountains the panther's flown. 

Now what made the panther a prisoner be ? 

Lo! 'twas the spices and luxury. 

And what set that lordly panther free? 

'Twas Love I — 'twas Love ! — 'twas no one but he. 



26 



302 A SPA N I s II /; ULL-F1 II T. 



DESCRIPTION OF A SPANISH HULL- 
FIGHT. 

BY LORD BYRO.V. 

HE lists are oped, the spacious area clear'd, 
Thousands on thousands piled are seated round; 
Long ere the first loud trumpet's note is heard, 
No vacant space for lated wight is found : 
Here dons, grandees, but chiefly dames abound, 
Skill'd in the ogle of a roguish eye, 

Yet ever well inclined to heal the wound ; 
None through their cold disdain are doom'd to die, 
As moon-struck bards complain, by Love's sad archery. 



Hush'd is the din of tongues — on gallant steeds, 

With milk-white crest, gold spur, and light-poised 
lance, 
Four cavaliers prepare for venturous deeds, 

And, lowly bending, to the lists advance ; 

Rich are their scarfs, their chargers featly prance : 
If in the dangerous game they shine to-day, 

The crowd's loud shout and ladies' lovely glance, 
Best prize of better acts, they bear away, 
And all that kings or chiefs e'er gain their toils repay. 



A SPANISH BULL-FIGHT. 303 

In costly sheen and gaudy cloak array'd ; 

But all afoot, the light-limb'd Matadore 
Stands in the centre, eager to invade 

The lord of lowing herds ; but not before 

The ground, with cautious tread, is travers'd o'er, 
Lest aught unseen should lurk to thwart his speed : 

His arms a dart, he fights aloof, nor more 
Can man achieve without the friendly steed — 
Alas ! too oft condemn'd for him to bear and bleed. 

Thrice sounds the clarion ; lo ! the signal falls, 
The den expands, and Expectation mute 

Gapes round the silent circle's peopled walls. 
Bounds, with one lashing spring, the mighty brute, 
And, wildly staring, spurns, with sounding foot, 

The sand, nor blindly rushes on his foe : 

Here, there, he points his threatening front, to suit 

His first attack, wide waving to and fro 
His angry tail ; red rolls his eye's dilated glow. 

Sudden he stops; his eye is fixed: away, 

Away, thou heedless boy ! prepare the spear : 
Now is thy time to perish, or display , 

The skill that yet may check his mad career. 

"With well-timed croupe, the nimble coursers veer ; 
On foams the bull, but not unscathed he goes ; 

Streams from his flank the crimson torrent clear : 
He flies, he wheels, distracted with his throes ; 
Dart follows dart ; lance, lance ; loud bellowings speak 
his woes. 



304 A SPANISH BULL-FIQUT. 

Again he conies ; nor dart nor lance avail, 

Nor the wild plunging of the tortured horse ; 
Though man and man's avenging arms assail, 

Yain are his weapons, vainer is his force. 

One gallant steed is stretch'd a mangled corse ; 
Another, hideous sight! unseam'd appears, 

His gory chest unveils life's panting source ; 
Though death-struck, still his feeble frame he rears; 
Staggering, but stemming all, his lord unharm'd he 
bears. 

Foil'd, bleeding, breathless, furious to the last, 

Full in the centre stands the bull at bay, 
Mid wounds and clinging darts, and lances brast, 
And foes disabled in the brutal fray: 
And now the Matadores around him play, 
Shake the red cloak and poise the ready brand : 
Once more through all he bursts his thundering 
way — 
Yain rage I the mantle quits the conynge hand, 
Wraps his fierce eye — 'tis past — he sinks upon the 
sand! 

Where his vast neck just mingles with the spine, 
Sheathed in his form the deadly weapon lies. 

He stops — he starts — disdaining to decline: 
Slowly he falls, amidst triumphant cries, 
Without a groan, without a struggle dies. 



THE RAVEN, 305 

The decorated car appears — on high 

The corse is piled — sweet sight for vulgar eyes— 
Four steeds that spurn the rein, as swift as shy, 
Hurl the dark bulk along, scarce seen in dashing by. 

Such the ungentle sport that oft invites 

The Spanish maid, and cheers the Spanish swain. 
Nurtured in blood betimes, his heart delights 
In vengeance, gloating on another's pain. 
"What private feuds the troubled village stain ! 
Though now one phalanx'd host should meet the foe, 

Enough, alas! in humble homes remain, 
To meditate 'gainst friends the secret blow, 
For some slight cause of wrath whence life's warm 
stream must flow. 
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto L, Stanzas 72-80. 



THE RAVEN. 
BY EDGAK ALLAN POE. 

iNCE upon a midnight dreary, 
While I pondered, weak and weary, 
Over many a quaint and curious 

Volume of forgotten lore — 

"While I nodded, nearly napping, 

Suddenly there came a tapping, 

As of some one gently rapping, 

Rapping at my chamber door ; 

26* 



30G THE RAVEN. 

"'Tis some visitor/' I muttered, 
"Tapping at my chamber door — 
Only this and nothing more." 

Ah, distinctly I remember - , 
It was in the bleak December, 
And each separate dying ember 

Wrought its ghost upon the floor. 
Eagerly I wished the morrow ; — 
Vainly I had sought to borrow 
From my books surcease of sorrow — 

Sorrow for the lost Lenore — 
For the rare and radiant maiden 

"Whom the angels name Lenore — 

Nameless here for evermore. 

And the silken sad uncertain 
Eustling of each purple curtain 
Thrilled me — filled me with fantastic 

Terrors never felt before; 
So that now, to still the beating 
Of my heart, I stood repeating 
" 'Tis some visitor entreating 

Entrance at my chamber door — 
Some late visitor entreating 

Entrance at my chamber door ; 

This it is and nothing more." 

Presently my soul grew stronger ; 
Hesitating then no longer, 



THE RAVEN. 307 

"Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly 

Your forgiveness I implore; 
But the fact is I was napping, 
And so gently you came rapping, 
And so faintly you came tapping, 

Tapping at my chamber door, 
That I scarce was sure I heard you" — 

Here I opened wide the door : — 

Darkness there and nothing more. 

Deep into that darkness peering, 
Long I stood there wondering, fearing, 
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals 

Ever dared to dream before; 
But the silence was unbroken, 
And the stillness gave no token, 
And the only word there spoken 

"Was the whispered word, "Lenore?" 
This I whispered, and an echo 

Murmured back the word, " Lenore I" — 

Merely this and nothing more. 

Back into the chamber turning, 
All my soul within me burning, 
Soon again I heard a tapping 
Something louder than before. 
" Surely," said I, " surely that is 
Something at my window lattice ; 
Let me see, then, what thereat is, 



308 THE RAVEN. 

And this mystery explore — 
Let my heart be still a moment 
And this mystery explore ; — 
'Tis the wind and nothing more." 

Open here I flung the shutter, 
When, with many a flirt and flutter, 
In there stepped a stately Raven 

Of the saintly days of yore. 
Not the least obeisance made he; 
Not a minute stopped or stayed he ; 
But, with mien of lord or lady, 

Perched above my chamber door — 
Perched upon a bust of Pallas, 

Just above my chamber door — 

Perched, and sat, and nothing more. 

Then this ebony bird beguiling 

My sad fancy into smiling, 

By the grave and stern decorum 

Of the countenance it wore, 
" Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, 
Thou," I said, "art sure no craven, 
Ghastly grim and ancient Raven 

Wandering from the Nightly shore — 
Tell me what thy lordly name is 

On the Night's Plutonian shore!" 

Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." 



THE RAVEN. 309 

Much I marvelled this ungainly 
Fowl to hear discourse so plainly, 
Though its answer little meaning — 

Little relevancy bore ; 
For we cannot help agreeing 
That no living human being 
Ever yet was blessed with seeing 

Bird above his chamber door — 
Bird or beast upon the sculptured 

Bust above his chamber door, 

With such a name as "Nevermore." 

But the Kaven, sitting lonely 

On that placid bust, spoke only 

That one word, as if his soul in 
That one word he did outpour. 

Nothing farther then he uttered; 

Not a feather then he fluttered — 

Till I scarcely more than muttered 
"Other friends have flown before — 

On the morrow he will leave me, 
As my Hopes have flown before." 
Then the bird said "Nevermore." 

Startled at the stillness broken 
By reply so aptly spoken, 
"Doubtless," said I, "what it utters 
Is its only stock and store 
Caught from some unhappy master 



310 THE RAVEN. 

Whom unmerciful Disaster 
Followed fast and followed faster 

Till his songs one burden bore — 
Till the dirges of his Hope that 
Melancholy burden bore 
Of 'Never — nevermore.' " 

But the Raven still beguiling 
All my sad soul into smiling, 
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in 

Front of bird and bust and door ; 
Then upon the velvet sinking, 
I betook myself to linking 
Fancy unto fancy, thinking 

What this ominous bird of yore — 
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, 

Gaunt, and ominous bird of yore 

Meant in croaking "Nevermore." 

This I sat engaged in guessing, 

But no syllable expressing 

To the fowl whose fiery eyes now 

Burned into my bosom's core ; 
This and more I sat divining, 
With my head at ease reclining 
On the cushion's velvet lining 

That the lamp -light gloated o'er, 
But whose velvet violet lining 

With the lamp-light gloating o'er 

She shall press, ah, nevermore ! 



THE RAVEN. 311 

Then, methought, the air grew denser, 
Perfumed from an unseen censer 
Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls 

Tinkled on the tufted floor. 
"Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee—. 
By these angels he hath sent thee 
Respite — respite and nepenthe 

From thy memories of Lenore ! 
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, 

And forget this lost Lenore t" 

Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." 

" Prophet I" said I, " thing of evil ! 
Prophet still, if bird or devil ! — 
Whether Tempter sent, or whether 

Tempest tossed thee here ashore, 
Desolate yet all undaunted, 
On this desert land enchanted — 
On this home by Horror haunted — 

Tell me truly, I implore — 
Is there — is there balm in Gilead ? 

Tell me — tell me, I implore!" 

Quoth the Raven " Nevermore." i 

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil-*- 
Prophet still, if bird or devil ! 
By that Heaven that bends above us — 

By that God we both adore — 
Tell this soul with sorrow laden, 



312 THE RAVEN. 

If within the distant Aidejin, 
It shall clasp a sainted maiden 

Whom the angels name Lenore — 
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, 
Whom the angels name Lenore." 
Quoth the Kaven, "Nevermore." 

" Be that word our sign of parting, 

Bird or fiend!" I shrieked, upstarting — 
"Get thee back into the tempest 

And the Night's Plutonian shore! 
Leave no black plume as a token 
Of that lie thy soul hath spoken ! 
Leave my loneliness unbroken ! 

Quit the bust above my door ! 
Take thy beak from out my heart, 

And take thy form from off my door I* 

Quoth the Kaven, "Nevermore." 

And the Kaven, never flitting, 
Still is sitting, still is sitting 
On the pallid bust of Pallas, 

Just above my chamber door ; 
And his eyes have all the seeming 
Of a demon's that is dreaming, 
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming 

Throws his shadow on the floor ; 
And my soul from out that shadow 

That lies floating on the floor 

Shall be lifted — nevermore! 



THE BELLS. 313 



THE BELLS. 

BY EDGAE ALLAN POE. 

I. 

EAR the sledges with the bells — 
Silver bells! 

What a world of merriment their melody foretells ! 
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, 

In the icy air of night ! 
While the stars that oversprinkle 
All the heavens, seem to twinkle 

With a crystalline delight; 
Keeping time, time, time, 
In a sort of Runic rhyme, 
To the tintinabulation that so .musically wells 
From the bells, bells, bells, bells, 
Bells, bells, bells — 
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells. 

II. 

Hear the mellow wedding bells, 

Golden bells! 

What a world of happiness their harmony foretells ! 

Through the balmy air of night 

How they ring out their delight ! 

From the molten-golden notes, 

And all in tune, 
27 



314 THE BELLS. 

What a liquid ditty floats 
To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats 

On the moon ! 
Oh, from out the sounding cells, 
What a gush of euphony voluminously wells! 
How it swells ! 
How it dwells 
On the future ! how it tells 
Of the rapture that impels 
To the swinging and the ringing 

Of the bells, bells, bells, 
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, 
Bells, bells, bells — 
To the rhyming and the chiming of. the bells I 

in. 
Hear the loud alarum bells — 
Brazen bells! 
What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells ! 
In the startled ear of night 
How they scream out their affright ! 
Too much horrified to speak, 
They can only shriek, shriek, 
Out of tune, 
In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire, 
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire 
Leaping higher, higher, higher, 
With a desperate desire, 
And a resolute endeavor 
Now — now to sit or never, 



THE BELLS. 



315 



By the side of the pale-faced moon. 
Oh, the bells, bells, bells! 
What a tale their terror tells, 
Of Despair! 
How they clang, and clash, and roar ! 
"What a horror they outpour 
On the bosom of the palpitating air ! 
Yet the ear it fully knows, 
By the twanging, 
And the clanging, 
How the danger ebbs and flows ; 
Yet the ear distinctly tells, 
In the jangling, 
And the wrangling, 
How the danger sinks and swells, 
By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the 
bells — 

Of the bells — 
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, 
Bells, bells, bells — 
In the clamour and the clangor of the bells! 



IV, 

Hear the tolling of the bells — 
Iron bells! 
What a world of solemn thought their monody compels ! 
In the silence of the night, 
How we shiver with affright 
At the melancholy menace of their tone! 



316 THE BELLS. 

For every sound that floats 

From the rust within their throats 

Is a groan. 
And the people — ah, the people — 
They that dwell up in the steeple, 

All alone, 
And who tolling, tolling, tolling, 

In that muffled monotone, 
Feel a glory in so rolling 

On the human heart a stone — 
They are neither man nor woman — 
They are neither brute nor human — 

They are Ghouls : 
And their king it is who tolls ; 
And he rolls, rolls, rolls, 
Eolls 

A paean from the bells ! 
And his merry bosom swells 

With the paean of the bells ! 
And he dances and he yells; 
Keeping time, time, time, 
In a sort of Eunic rhyme, 

To the paean of the bells — 
Of the bells : 
Keeping time, time, time, 
In a sort of Kunic rhyme, 

To the throbbing of the bells — 
Of the bells, bells, bells — 

To the sobbing of the bells; 



ULALUME. 31? 

Keeping time, time, time, 

As lie knells, knells, knells, 
In a nappy Kunic rhyme, 

To the rolling of the bells — 
Of the bells, bells, bells — 
To the tolling of the bells, 
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells — 
Bells, bells, bells — 
To the moaning and the groaning of the bells. 



ULALUME. 
BY EDGAR ALLAN POE. 

HE skies they were ashen and sober; 
The leaves they were crisped and sere- 

The leaves they were withering and sere ; 
It was night in the lonesome October 

Of my most immemorial year; 
It was hard by the dim lake of Auber, 

In the misty mid region of Weir — 
It was down by the dank tarn of Auber, 

In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir. 

Here once, through an alley Titanic, 

Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul — 
Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul. 
27* 



318 ULALUME. 

These were days when my heart was volcanic 

As the scoriae rivers that roll — 

As the lavas that restlessly roll 
Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek 

In the ultimate climes of the pole — 
That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek 

In the realms of the boreal pole. 

Our talk had been serious and sober, 

But our thoughts they were palsied and sere — 
Our memories were treacherous and sere — 

For we knew not the month was October, 

And we marked not the night of the year — 
(Ah, night of all nights in the year!) 

We noted not the dim lake of Auber — 

(Though once we had journeyed down here) — 

Remembered not the dank tarn of Auber, 
Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir. 

And now, as the night was senescent 
And star-dials pointed to morn — 
As the star-dials hinted of morn — 

At the end of our path a liquescent 
And nebulous lustre was born, 

Out of which a miraculous crescent 
Arose with a duplicate horn — 

Astarte's bediamonded crescent 

Distinct with its duplicate horn. 



ULALUME. 319 

And I said — "She is warmer than Dian: 

She rolls through an ether of sighs — 

She revels in a region of sighs: 
She has seen that the tears are not dry on 

These cheeks, where the worm never dies, 
And has come past the stars of the Lion 

To point us the path to the skies — 

To the Lethean peace of the skies — 
Come up, in despite of the Lion, 

To shine on us with her bright eyes — 
Come up through the lair of the Lion, 

"With love in her luminous eyes." 

But Psyche, uplifting her finger, 

Said — "Sadly this star I mistrust — 
Her pallor I strangely mistrust: — 

Oh, hasten ! — oh, let us not linger ! 

Oh, fly ! — let us fly !— for we must." 

In terror she spoke, letting sink her 

Wings until they trailed in the dust — 

In agony sobbed, letting sink her 

Plumes till they trailed in the dust — 
Till they sorrowfully trailed in the dust. 

I replied — "This is nothing but dreaming: 
Let us on by this tremulous light! 
Let us bathe in this crystalline light! 

Its Sybilic splendour is beaming 

"With Hope and in Beauty to-night: — 

See ! — it flickers up the sky through the night ! 



320 ULALULME. 

Ah, we safely may trust to its gleaming, 
And be sure it will lead us aright — 

vVe safely may trust to a gleaming 
That cannot but guide us aright, 
Since it flickers up to Heaven through the night." 

Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her, 
And tempted her out of her gloom — 
And conquered her scruples and gloom ; 

And we passed to the end of the vista, 

But were stopped by the door of a tomb — 
By the door of a legended tomb ; 

And I said — " What is written, sweet sister, 
On the door of this legended tomb?" 
She replied — " Ulalume — Ulalurne — 
'Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume ! " 

Then my heart it grew ashen and sober 

As the leaves that were crisped and sere — 
As the leaves that were withering and sere, 

And I cried — "It was surely October 
On this very night of last year 
That I journeyed — I journeyed down here — 
That I brought a dread burden down here — 
On this night of all nights in the year, 
Ah, what demon has tempted me here ? 

Well I know, now, this dim lake of Auber — 
This misty mid region of Weir — 

Well I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber, 
This ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir." 



TO A MOUNTAIN DAISY. 321 



TO A MO UNTA1N DAISY, 

ON TURNING ONE DOWN WITH THE PLOUGH IN 
APRIL, 1786. 

BY ROBERT BURNS. 



W 



k EE, modest, crimson-tipped flower, 
Them's met me in an evil hour : 
For I maun crash amang the stoure 

Thy slender stem; 
To spare thee now is past my power, 
Thou bonnie gem. 

Alas! it's no thy neebor sweet, 
The bonnie lark, companion meet, 
Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet, 

"WT speckled breast, 
When upward springing, blythe, to greet 

The purpling east. 

Cauld blew the bitter -biting north 
Upon thy early humble birth ; 
Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth 

Amid the storm, 
Scarce rear'd above the parent earth 

Thy tender form. 



322 TO A MOUNTAIN DAISY. 

The flaunting flowers our gardens yield, 
High sheltering woods and wa's maun shield, 
But thou, beneath the random bield 

0' clod or stane, 
Adorns the histie stibble-field, 

Unseen, alane. 



There, in thy scanty mantle clad, 
Thy snawie bosom sunward spread, 
Thou lifts thy unassuming head 

In humble guise ; 
But now the share uptears thy bed, 

And low thou lies! 



Such is the fate of artless maid, 
Sweet floweret of the rural shade ! 
By love's simplicity betray'd, 

And guileless trust, 
Till she, like thee, all soil'd is laid 

Low i' the dust. 



Such is the fate of simple bard, 

On life's rough ocean luckless starr'd! 

Unskilful he to note the card 

Of prudent lore, 
Till billows rage, and gales blow hard, 

And whelm him o'er! 



SUBLIMITY OF THE PROPHET ISAIAH. 323 

Such fate to suffering worth, is given, 
"Who long with wants and woes has striven, 
By human pride or cunning driven 

To misery's brink, 
Till, wrench'd of every stay but Heaven, 

He, ruin'd, sink! 

E'en thou who mourn'st the Daisy's fate, 
That fate is thine — no distant date ; 
Stern Euin's ploughshare drives, elate, 

Full on thy bloom, 
Till, crush'd beneath the furrow's weight, 

Shall be thy doom! 

St. 1 : Thau's, Thou hast ; maun, must ; stoure, broken-up 
earth. St. 2 : no, not ; neebor, neighbour ; weet, wet. St. 3 : 
glinted, shone, glanced., St. 4 : wa's maun, walls must ; bield y 
shelter ; stane, stone ; Mstie stibble-field, dry and rugged stubble- 
field ; alane, alone. 



SUBLIMITY OF THE PROPHET ISAIAH. 
BY ROBERT LOWTH, BISHOP OF LONDON. 

k HOEYER wishes to understand the full force 
and excellence of the figure of Personification, 
as well as the elegant use of it in the Hebrew ode, 
must apply to Isaiah, whom I do not scruple to pro- 
nounce the sublimest of poets. He will there find, in 



324 SUBLIMITY OF THE PROPHET ISAIAH. 

one short poem, examples of almost every form of the 
Prosopopoeia, and indeed of all that constitutes the 
sublime in composition. I trust it will not be thought 
unseasonable to refer immediately to the passage 
itself,* and to remark a few of the principal excel- 
lencies. 

The prophet, after predicting the liberation of the 
Jews from their severe captivity in Babylon, and their 
restoration to their own country, introduces them as 
reciting a kind of triumphal song upon the fall of the 
Babylonish monarch, replete with imagery, and with 
the most elegant and animated personifications. A 
sudden exclamation, expressive of their joy and admi- 
ration on the unexpected revolution in their affairs, 
and the destruction of their tyrants, forms the exor- 
dium of the poem. The earth itself triumphs with 
the inhabitants thereof; the fir-trees and the cedars 
of Lebanon (under which images the parabolic style 
frequently delineates the kings and princes of the 
Gentiles) exult with joy, and persecute with contempt- 
uous reproaches the humbled power of a ferocious 
enemy : — 

The whole earth is at rest, is quiet; they burst forth into a joy- 
ful shout ; 
Even the fir-trees rejoice over thee, the cedars of Lebanon: 
Since thou art fallen, no feller hath come up against us. 

This is followed by a bold and animated personifica- 
tion of Hades, or the infernal regions. Hades excites 



Chap. xiv. 4-27. 



SUBLIMITY OF THE PROPHET ISAIAH. 325 

his inhabitants, the ghosts of princes, and the departed 
spirits of kings: they rise immediately from their 
seats, and proceed to meet the monarch of Babylon ; . 
they insult and deride him, and comfort themselves 
with the view of his calamity : — 

Art thou, even thou too, become weak as we ? Art thou made 
like unto us? 

Is then thy pride brought down to the grave ? the sound of thy 
sprightly instruments? 

Is the vermin become thy couch, and the earth-worm thy cover- 
ing? 

Again, the Jewish people are the speakers, in an ex- 
clamation after the manner of a funeral lamentation, 
which indeed the whole form of this composition ex- 
actly imitates. The remarkable fall of this powerful 
monarch is thus beautifully illustrated : — 



How art thou fallen from heaven, Lucifer, son of the morn- 
ing! 
Art cut down from earth, thou that didst subdue the nations ! 



He himself is at length brought upon the stage, boast- 
ing in the most pompous terms of his own power, 
which furnishes the poet with an excellent opportunity 
of displaying the unparalleled misery of his downfall. 
Some persons are introduced, who find the dead car- 
cass of the king of Babylon cast out and exposed: 
they attentively contemplate it, and at last scarcely 
know it to be his : — 

Is this the man that made the earth to tremble ; that shook the 

kingdoms ? 
That made the world like a desert ; that destroyed the cities ? 
28 



326 SUBLIMITY OF THE PROPHET ISAIAH. 

They reproach him with being denied the common 
rites of sepulture, on account of the cruelty and atro- 
city of his conduct ; they execrate his name, his off- 
spring, and their posterity. A solemn address, as of 
the Deity himself, closes the scene ; and he denounces 
against the king of Babylon, his posterity, and even 
against the city which was the seat of their cruelty, ' 
perpetual destruction ; and confirms the immutability 
of his own counsels by the solemnity of an oath. 

How forcible is this imagery, how diversified, how 
sublime! how elevated the diction, the figures, the 
sentiments ! The Jewish nation, the cedars of Lebanon, 
the ghosts of departed kings, the Babylonish monarch, 
the travellers who find his corpse, and last of all 
Jehovah himself, are the characters which support 
this beautiful lyric drama. One continued action is 
kept up, or rather a series of interesting actions are 
connected together in an incomparable whole. This, 
indeed, is the principal and distinguished excellence 
of the sublimer ode, and is displayed in its utmost 
perfection in this poem of Isaiah, which may be con- 
sidered as one of the most ancient, and certainly the 
most finished specimen of that species of composition 
which has been transmitted to us. The personifications 
here are frequent, yet not confused ; bold, yet not im- 
probable : a free, elevated, and truly divine spirit per- 
vades the whole ; nor is there anything wanting in 
this ode to defeat its claim to the character of perfect 
beauty and sublimity. If, indeed, I may be indulged 



THE THREE LADIES OF SORROW. 327 

in the free declaration of my own sentiments, on this 
occasion, I do not know a single instance in the whole 
compass of Greek and Eoman poetry, which, in every 
excellence of composition, can be said to equal, or 
even to approach it. 



THE THREE LADIES OF SORROW. 
BY THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. 

HE eldest of the three is named Mater Lachry- 
marum, Our Lady of Tears. She it is that night 
and day raves and moans, calling for vanished faces. 
She stood in Eama, where a voice was heard of lamen- 
tation, — Eachel weeping for her children, and refused 
to be comforted. She it was that stood in Bethlehem 
on the night when Herod's sword swept its nurseries 
of Innocents, and the little feet were stiffened forever, 
which, heard at times as they tottered along floors 
overhead, woke pulses of love in household hearts 
*hat were not unmarked in heaven. 

Her eyes are sweet and subtle, wild and sleepy, by 
turns ; oftentimes rising to the clouds, oftentimes chal- 
lenging the heavens. She wears a diadem round her 
head. And I knew by childish memories that she 
could go abroad upon the winds, when she heard the 
sobbing of litanies, or the thundering of organs, and 



328 THE THREE LADIES OF SORROW. 

when she beheld the mustering of summer clouds. 
This sister, the elder, it is that carries keys more than 
papal at her girdle, which open every cottage and 
every palace. She, to my knowledge, sate all last 
summer by the bedside of the blind beggar, him that 
so often and so gladly I talked with, whose pious 
(laughter, eight years old, with the sunny countenance, 
resisted the temptations of play and village mirth to 
travel all day long on dusty roada with her afflicted 
father. For this did God send her a great reward. In 
the spring-time of the year, and whilst yet her own 
spring was budding, he recalled her to himself. But 
her blind father mourns forever over her; still he 
dreama at midnight that the little guiding hand is 
locked within his own ; and still he wakens to a dark- 

i that is now within a second and a deeper darkness. 
This Mater Lachrymarum also has been sitting all this 
winter of 18-14-5 within the bedchamber of the Czar, 
bringing before his eyes a daughter (not less pious) 
that vanished to God not less suddenly, and left behind 
her a darkness not less profound. By the power of 
her keys it is that Our Lady of Tears glides a ghostly 
intruder into the chamber of sleepless men, sleepless 
women, sleepless children, from Ganges to the Nile, 
from Nile to Mississippi. And her, because she is the 
first-born of her house, and has the widest empire, let 
us honour with the title of " Madonna." 

The second sister is called Mater Suspiriorum, Our 
Lady of Sighs. She never scales the clouds, nor walks 



THE THREE LADIES OF SORROW. 329 

abroad upon the winds. She wears no diadem. And 
her eyes, if they were ever seen, would be neither 
sweet nor subtle ; no man could read their story ; they 
would be found filled with perishing dreams, and with 
wrecks of forgotten delirium. But she raises not her 
eyes; her head, on which sits a dilapidated turban, 
droops forever, forever fastens on the dust. She weeps 
not. She groans not. But she sighs inaudibly at in- 
tervals. Her sister Madonna is oftentimes stormy and 
frantic, raging in the highest against heaven, and de- 
manding back her darlings. But our Lady of Sighs 
never clamours, never defies, dreams not of rebellious 
aspirations. She is humble to abjectness. Hers is the 
meekness that belongs to the hopeless. Murmur she 
may, but it is in her sleep. Whisper she may, but it 
is to herself in the twilight. Mutter she does at times, 
but it is in solitary places that are desolate as she is 
desolate, in ruined cities, and when the sun has gone 
down to his rest. This sister is the visitor of the Pa- 
riah, of the Jew, of the bondsman to the oar in the 
Mediterranean galleys ; of the English criminal in 
Norfolk Island, blotted out from the books of remem- 
brance in sweet far-off England ; of the baffled peni- 
tent reverting his eyes forever upon a solitary grave, 
which to him seems the altar overthrown of some past 
and bloody sacrifice, on which altar no oblations can 
now be availing, whether towards pardon that he 
might implore, or towards reparation that he might 
attempt. Every slave that at noonday looks up to the 

28* 



330 THE THREE LADIES OF SORROW. 

tropical sun with timid reproach, as he points with 
one hand to the earth, our general mother, but for him 
a step-mother, — as he points with the other hand to 
the Bible, our general teacher, but against him sealed 
and sequestered ; — every woman sitting in darkness, 
without love to shelter her head, or hope to illumine 
her solitude, because the heaven-born instincts kind- 
ling in her nature germs of holy affections, which God 
implanted in her womanly bosom, having been stifled 
by social necessities, now burn sullenly to waste, like 
sepulchral lamps amongst the ancients ; every nun 
defrauded of her unreturni time by wicked 

kinsman, whom God will judge; every captive in 
every dungeon; all that are betrayed, and all that are 
rejected; outcasts by traditionary law, and children 
of hereditary disgrace, — all these walk with Our Lady 
of Sighs. She also carries a key; but she needs it 
little. For her kingdom is chiefly amongst the tents 
of Shem, and the houseless vagrant of every clime. 
Yet in the very highest ranks of man she finds chapels 
of her own ; and even in glorious England there are 
some that, to the world, carry their heads as proudly 
as the reindeer, who yet secretly have received her 
mark upon their foreheads. 

But the third sister, who is also the youngest ! 

Hush ! whisper whilst we talk of her ! Her kingdom 
is not large, or else no flesh should live ; but within 
that kingdom all power is hers. Her head, turreted 
like that of Cybele, rises almost beyond the reach of 



TEE TEREE LADIES OF SORROW. 331 

sight. She droops not ; and her eyes rising so high 
might be hidden by distance. But, being what they 
are, they cannot be hidden ; through the treble veil 
of crape which she wears, the fierce light of a blazing 
misery, that rests not for matins or for vespers for 
noon of day or noon of night, for ebbing or for flow- 
ing tide, may be read from the very ground. She is 
the defier of God. She also is the mother of lunacies, 
and the suggestress of suicides. Deep lie the roots of 
her power ; but narrow is the nation that she rules. 
For she can approach only those in whom a profound 
nature has been upheaved by central convulsions ; in 
whom the heart trembles and the brain rocks under 
conspiracies of tempest from without and tempest from 
within, Madonna moves with uncertain steps, fast or 
slow, but still with tragic grace. Our Lady of Sighs 
creeps timidly and stealthily. But this youngest sister 
moves with incalculable motions, bounding, and with 
a tiger's leaps. She carries no key ; for, though com- 
ing rarely amongst men, she storms all doors at which 
she is permitted to enter at all. And her name is Mater 
Tenebrarum, — Our Lady of Darkness 



SIB GALAHAD. 



SIR GALAHAD. 
BY ALFRED TENNYSON. 

i^TS-Y good blade carves the casques of men, 
(l/J-l My tough lance thrusteth sure, 
My strength is as the strength of ten, 

Because my heart is pure. 
The shattering trumpet shrilleth high, 

The hard brands shiver on the steel, 
The splinter'd spear-shafts crack and fly, 

The horse and rider reel : 
They reel, they roll in clanging lists, 

And when the tide of combat stands, 
Perfume and flowers fall in showers, 

That lightly rain from ladies' hands. 

How sweet are looks that ladies bend 

On whom their favours fall ! 
For them I battle till the end, 

To save from shame and thrall : 
But all my heart is drawn above, 

My knees are bow'd in crypt and shrine : 
I never felt the kiss of love, 

ISTor maiden's hand in mine. 



SIR GALAHAD. 333 

More bounteous aspects on me beam, 
Me mightier transports move and thrill ; 

So keep I fair thro' faith and prayer 
A virgin heart in work and will. 

"When down the stormy crescent goes, 

A light before me swims, 
Between dark stems the forest glows, 

I hear a noise of hymns : 
Then by some secret shrine I ride; 

I hear a voice, but none are there; 
The stalls are void, the doors are wide, 

The tapers burning fair. 
Fair gleams the snowy altar-cloth, 

The silver vessels sparkle clean, 
The shrill bell rings, the censer swings, 

And solemn chaunts resound between. 

Sometimes on lonely mountain-meres 

I find a magic bark; 
I leap on board : no helmsman steers : 

I float till all is dark. 
A gentle sound, an awful light! 

Three angels bear the holy Grail : 
With folded feet, in stoles of white, 

On sleeping wings they sail. 
Ah ; blessed vision ! blood of God! 

My spirit beats her mortal bars, 
As down dark tides the glory slides, 

And star-like mingles with the stars. 



334 SIR GALAHAD. 

When on my goodly charger borne 

Thro' dreaming towns I go, 
The cock crows ere the Christmas morn, 

The streets are dumb with snow. 
The tempest crackles on the leads, 

And, ringing, spins from brand and mail 
But o'er the dark a glory spreads, 

And gilds the driving hail. 
I leave the plain, I climb the height; 

No branchy thicket shelter yields ; 
But blessed forms in whistling storms 

Fly o'er waste fens and windy fields. 

A maiden knight — to me is given 

Such hope, I know not fear; 
I yearn to breathe the airs of heaven 

That often meet me here. 
I muse on joy that will not cease, 

Pure spaces clothed in living beams, 
Pure lilies of eternal peace, 

Whose odours haunt my dreams, 
And, stricken by an angel's hand, 

This mortal armour that I wear, 
This weight and size, this heart and eyes, 

Are touch'd, are turn'd to finest air. 

The clouds are broken in the sky, 
And thro' the mountain-walls 

A rolling organ-harmony 

Swells up, and shakes and falls. 



INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY. 335 

Then move the trees, the copses nod, 

Wings flutter, voices hover clear: 
"0 just and faithful knight of Grod! 

Eide on! the prize is near." 
So pass I hostel, hall, and grange; 

By bridge and ford, by park and pale, 
All-arm'd I ride, whate'er betide, 

Until I find the holy Grail. 



ODE. 

INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLEC- 
TIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD. 

BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 

The Child is Father of the Man ; 
And I could wish my days to be 
Bound each to each by natural piety. 

I. 
HEBE was a time when meadow, grove, and 

stream, 
The earth, and every common sight, 

To me did seem 
Apparelled in celestial light, 
The glory and the freshness of a dream. 



336 INTIMATIONS F I M M RTA L IT Y. 

It is not now as it hath been of yore ; 
Turn whereso'er I may, 
By night or day, 
The things which I have seen I now can see no more. 

II. 
The Eainbow comes and goes, 
And lovely is the Rose, 
The Moon doth with delight 
Look round her wheD the heavens are bare ; 
Waters on a starry night 
Are beautiful and fair; 
The sunshine is a glorious birth; 
But yet I know, where'er I go, 
That there hath past away a glory from the earth. 

m. 

Now, while the Birds thus sing a joyous song, 

And while the young Lambs bound, 

As to the tabor's sound 
To me alone there came a thought of grief: 
A timely utterance gave that thought relief, 

And I again am strong: 
The Cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep ; 
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong ; 
I hear the Echoes through the mountains throng, 
The Winds come to me from the fields of Sleep, 

And all the earth is gay; 
Land and sea 
Give themselves up to jollity, 



INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY. 33Y 

And with the heart of May- 
Doth every Beast keep holiday ; — 
Thou Child of Joy ; 
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy 
Shepherd Boy! 

IV. 

Ye blessed Creatures, I have heard the call 

Ye to each other make, I see 
The heavens laugh with you in your Jubilee ; 
My heart is at your festival, 
My head hath its coronal, 
The fulness of your bliss I feel — I feel it all. 
Oh evil day ! if I were sullen 
"While Earth herself is adorning, 
This sweet May-morning, 
And the Children are culling 
On every side, 
In a thousand valleys far and wide, 

Fresh flowers ; while the sun shines warm, 
And the Babe leaps up on his Mother's arm: — 
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear ! 
— But there's a Tree, of many one, 
A single Field which I have looked upon, 
Both of them speak of something that is gone: 
The Pansy at my feet 
Doth the same tale repeat: 
Whither is fled the visionary gleam ? 
Where is it now, the glory and the dream ? 
29 



338 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY. 

V. 

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting : 
The Soul that rises with us, our Life's Star, 
Hath had elsewhere its setting, 
And cometh from afar: 
Not in entire forgetfulness, 
And not in utter nakedness, 
But trailing clouds of glory do we come 

From God, who ifl our home : 
Ileaven lies about us in our infancy! 
Shades of the prison-house begin to close 

Upon the growing Boy, 
But He beholds the light, and whence it flows 

He sees it in his joy; 
The Youth, who daily farther from the East 
Must travel, still is Nature's Priest, 
And by the vision splendid 
Is on his way attended ; 
At length the Man perceives it die away 
And fade into the light of common day. 

VI. 
Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own ; 
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind, 
And, even with something of a Mother's mind, 
And no unworthy aim, 
The homely Nurse doth all she can 
To make her Foster-child, her Inmate Man, 

Forget the glories he hath known, 
And that imperial palace whence he came. 






INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY. 339 

VII. 

Behold the Child among his new-born blisses, 
A six years' Darling of a pigmy size ! 
See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies, 
Fretted by sallies of his Mother's kisses, 
With light upon him from his Father's eyes I 
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart, 
Some fragment from his dream of human life, 
Shaped by himself with newly-learned art ; 
A wedding or a festival, 
A mourning or a funeral ; 

And this hath now his heart, ■ 
And unto this he frames his song: 

Then will he fit his tongue 
To dialogues of business, love, or strife ; 

But it will not be long 

Ere this be thrown aside, 

And with new joy and pride 
The little Actor cons another part ; 
Filling from time to time his "humorous stage" 
With all the Persons, down to palsied Age, 
That Life brings with her in her Equipage ; 

As if his whole vocation 

Were endless imitation. 

VIII. 
Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie 

Thy Soul's immensity ; 
Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep 



340 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY. 

Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind, 
That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep, 
Haunted for ever by the denial mind, — 

Mighty Prophet! Seer blest! 
On whom those truths do rest, 
Which we are toiling all our lives to find, 
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave; 
Thou, over whom thy Immortality 
Broods like the Day, a Master o'er a Slave, 
A Presence which is not to be put by; 
Thou little Child, y<t glorious in the might 
Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height, 
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke 

irs to bring the inevitable yoke, 
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife? 
Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly freight, 
And custom lie upon thee with a weight, 
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life ! 



IX. 

O joy ! that in our embers 

Is something that doth live, 
That nature yet remembers 
What was so fugitive! 
The thought of our past years in me doth breed 
Perpetual benediction : not indeed 
For that which is most worthy to be blest ; 
Delight and liberty, the simple creed 



INTIMATIONS F IMMORTALITY. 341 

Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest 
"With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast : 
Not for these I raise 
The song of thanks and praise ; 
But for those obstinate questionings 
Of sense and outward things, 
Fallings from us, vanishings ; 
Blank misgivings of a Creature 
Moving about in worlds not realized, 
High instincts before which our mortal Nature 
Did tremble like a guilty Thing surprised : 
But for those first affections, 
Those shadowy recollections, 

Which, be they what they may, 
Are yet the fountain light of all our day, 
Are yet a master light of all our seeing ; 
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make 
Our noisy years seem moments in the being 
Of the eternal Silence : truths that wake, 
To perish never ; 
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour, 

Nor Man nor Boy, 
Nor all that is at enmity with joy, 
Can utterly abolish or destroy! 
Hence in a season of calm weather 
Though inland far we be, 
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea 
Which brought us hither, 
Can in a moment travel thither, 
29* 



342 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY. 

And see the Children sport upon the shore, 
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. 

X. 
Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song ! 
And let the young Lambs bound 
As to the tabor's sound! 
We in thought will join your throng, 
Ye that pipe and ye that ) 

Ye that through your hearts to-day 
Feel the gladness of the Ma\ ! 

What though the radiance which was once so bright 

Be now for ever taken from my .-: 

Though nothing can bring back the hour 

Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower 

We will grieve not, rather find 

Strength in what remains behind ; 

In the primal sympathy 

"Which having been must ever be ; 

In the soothing thoughts that spring 

Out of human suffering; 

In the faith that looks through death, 
In years that bring the philosophic mind. 

XI. 

And 0, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves, 
Forebode not any severing of our loves ! 
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might ; 
I only have relinquished one delight 



BOSWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. 343 

To live beneath your more habitual sway. 
I loyed the Brooks which down their channels fret, 
Even more than when I tripped lightly as they ; 
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day 

Is lovely yet; 
The Clouds that gather round the setting sun 
Do take a sober colouring from an eye 
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality ; 
Another race hath been, and other palms are won. 
Thanks to the human heart by which we live, 
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears, 
To me the meanest flower that blows can give 
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. 



BOSWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON.— HOW 
"HISTORIES" ARE WRITTEN, 

BY THOMAS CAELYLE. 

EITICS insist much on the Poet that he should 
communicate an "Infinitude" to his delineation ; 
that by intensity of conception, by that gift of " trans- 
cendental Thought," which is fitly named genius, and 
inspiration, he should inform the Finite with a certain 
Infinitude of significance ; or as they sometimes say, 
ennoble the Actual into Idealness. They are right in 
their precept ; they mean rightly. But in cases like 



344 BOS WELL'S LLFE OF JOHNSOA 

this of the Jbhnsoniad, such is the dark grandeur of 
that u Time-element," wherein man's sou] here below 
lives Imprisoned, — the Poet's task is, as it. were, done 
to his hand: Time itself, which La the outer veil of 
Eternity, invests, of its own accord, with an authentic, 
felt "infinitude," whatsover it has once embraced in 
its mysterious folds. Consider all thai lies in thai one 
word, Past! What a pathetic, sacred, in every - 
'•, meaning is implied in it; a meaning growing 
rer, the farther we recede in Time, — the 
of that same Past we have to look through ! — ■ 
On which ground indeed nausl Sauerteig have built, 
and not without plausibility, in that strange thesis of 
hlfi : "That History, after all, is the true Poetry ; that 
\l lity, if rightly interpreted, is grander than Fiction; 
nay that even in the right interpretation of Reality 
and: History does genuine Poetry consist." 

Thus for BosicelTs Life of Johnson has Time done, is 
Time still doing, what no ornament of Art or Artifice 
c d have done for it. Bough Samuel and sleek 
wh idling James were, and are not. Their Life and 
whole personal Environment has melted into air. The 
Mitre Tavern still stands in Fleet Street: but where 
now is its scot-and-lot paying, beef-and-ale lovin'g, 
cocked-hatted, pot-bellied Landlord; its rosy-faced 
assiduous Landlady, with all her shining brass-pans, 
waxed tables, well-filled larder-shelves ; her cooks 
and boot-jacks, and errand-boys, and watery- mouthed 
hangers-on ? Gone ! gone ! The becking AVaiter who, 



BO SWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. 345 

with wreathed smiles, was wont to spread for Samuel 
and Bozzy their supper of the gods, has long since 
pocketed his last sixpence ; and vanished, sixpences 
and all, like a ghost at cock- crowing. The Bottles 
they drank out of are all broken, the Chairs they sat 
on all rotted and burnt ; the very Knives and Forks 
they ate with have rusted to the heart, and become 
brown oxide o¥ iron, and mingled with the indiscrimi- 
nate clay. All, all has vanished ; in very deed and 
truth, like that baseless fabric of Prospero's air- vision. 
Of the Mitre Tavern nothing but the bare walls re- 
main there : of London, of England, of the World, 
nothing but the bare walls remain ; and these also de- 
caying, (were they of adamant,) only slower. The 
mysterious Eiver of Existence rushes on : a new Bil- 
low thereof has arrived, and lashes wildly as ever 
round the old embankments ; but the former Billow 
with its loud, mad eddyings, where is it ? — Where ! — 
Now this Book of Boswell's, this is precisely a revo- 
cation of the edict of Destiny ; so that Time shall not 
utterly, not so soon by several centuries, have dominion 
over us. A little row of Naphtha-lamps, with its line 
of Naphtha-light, burns clear and holy through the dead 
Night of the Past ; they who are gone are still here ; 
though hidden they are revealed, though dead they 
yet speak. There it shines, that little miraculously 
lamplit Pathway ; shedding its feebler • and feebler 
twilight into the boundless dark Oblivion, — for all that 
our Johnson touched has become illuminated for us : 



346 BOS WELL'S LIFE OF JOIINSON. 

on which miraculous little Pathway we can still travel, 
and see wonders. 

It is not speaking with exaggeration, but with strict 
measured sobriety, to say that this Book of BoswelTs 
will give us more real insight into the History of Eng- 
land during those days than twenty other Books, 
falsely entitled " Histories," which take to themselves 
that special aim. Wha1 good is it to* me though in- 
numerable Smollets and Belshams keep dinning in 
my ears that a man named George the Third was born 
ami bred up, and a man named George the Second 
died; that "Walpole, and the Pelhams, and Chatham, 
and Eockingham, and Shelburne, and North, with their 
Coalition or their Separation Ministries, all ousted one 
another; and vehemently scrambled for "the thing 
they called the Eudder of Government, but which 
was in reality the Spigot of Taxation ?" That debates 
were held, and infinite jarring and jargoning took 
place ; and road-bills and enclosure-bills, and game- 
bills and India-bills, and Laws which no man can 
number, which happily few men needed to trouble 
their heads with beyond the passing moment, were 
enacted, and printed by the King's Stationer ? That 
he who sat in Chancery, and rayed out speculation 
from the Woolsack, was now a man that squinted, now 
a man that did not squint ? To the hungry and thirsty 
mind all this avails next to nothing. These men and 
these things, we indeed know, did swim, by strength 
or by specific levity, as apples or as horse-dung, on 



BOSWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. 34T 

the top of the current : but it is by painfully noting 
the courses, eddyings and bobbings hither and thither 
of such drift-articles, that you will unfold to me the 
nature of the current itself; of that mighty-rolling, 
loud-roaring Life-current, bottomless as the founda- 
tions of the Universe, mysterious as its Author ? The 
thing I want to see is not Eedbook Lists, and Court 
Calendars, and Parliamentary Eegisters, but the Life 
of Man in England: what men„did, thought, suffered, 
enjoyed; the form, especially the spirit, of their ter- 
restrial existence, its outward environment, its inward 
principle ; how and what it was ; whence it proceeded, 
whither it was tending. 

Mournful, in truth, is it to behold what the busi- 
ness called, "History," in these so enlightened and 
illuminated times, still continues to be. Can you 
gather from it, read till your eyes go out, any dim- 
mest shadow of an answer to that great question: 
How men lived and had their being; were but it 
economically, as what wages they got, and what they 
bought with these ? Unhappily you cannot. History 
will throw no light on any such matter. At the point 
where living memory fails, it is all darkness; Mr. 
Senior and Mr. Sadler must still debate this simplest 
of all elements in the condition of the Past : "Whether 
men were better off, in their mere larders and pantries, 
or were worse off than now ! History, as it stands all 
bound up in gilt volumes, is but a shade more instruc- 
tive than the wooden volumes of a Backgammon- 






343 BOSWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. 

board. How my Prime Minister was appointed is of 
less moment to me than How my House Servant was 
hired. In these days, ten ordinary Histories of Kings 
and Courtiers were well exchanged against the tenth 
part of one good History of Booksellers. 

For example, I would fain know the History of 
Scotland : who can tell it me ? " Robertson," say in- 
numerable voices ; " Kobertson against the world." I 
open Robertson ; and find there, through long ages too 
confused for narrative, and fit only to be presented in 
the way of epitome and distilled essence, a cunning 
answer and hypothesis, not to this question: By 
whom, and by what means, when and how, was this 
fair broad Scotland, with its Arts and Manufactures, 
Temples, Schools, Institutions, Poetry, Spirit, National 
Character, created, and made arable, verdant, peculiar, 
great, here as I can see some fair section of it lying, 
kind and strong (like some Bacchus-tamed Lion), from 
the Castle-hill of Edinburgh ? — but to this other 
question: How did the king keep himself alive in 
those old days; and restrain so many Butcher-Barons 
and ravenous Henchmen from utterly extirpating one 
another, so that killing went on in some sort of mode- 
ration? In the one little Letter of iEneas Sylvius, 
from old Scotland, there is more of History than in 
all this. — At length, however, we come to a luminous 
age, interesting enough ; to the age of the Reforma- 
tion. All Scotland is awakened to a second higher 
life : the Spirit of the Highest stirs in every bosom, 



BO SWELL' S LIFE OF JOHNSON. 349 

agitates every bosom ; Scotland is convulsed, ferment- 
ing, struggling to body itself forth anew. To the 
herdsman, among his cattle in remote woods ; to the 
craftsman, in his rude, heath-thatched workshop, among 
his rude guild-brethren ; to the great and to the little, 
a new light has arisen : in town and hamlet groups 
are gathered, with eloquent looks, and governed or 
ungovernable tongues ; the great and the little go 
forth together to do battle for the Lord against the 
mighty. We ask, with breathless eagerness: How 
was it ? how went it on ? Let us understand it, let us 
see it, and know it ! — In reply, is handed us a really 
graceful and most dainty little Scandalous Chronicle 
(as for some Journal of Fashion) of two persons: 
Mary Stuart, a Beauty, but over light headed; and 
Henry Darnley, a Booby who had fine legs. How 
these first courted, billed and cooed, according to 
nature ; then pouted, fretted, grew utterly enraged, 
and blew one another up with gunpowder : this, and 
not the History of Scotland, is what we good naturedly 
read. Xay, by other hands, something like a horse- 
load of other Books have been written to prove that 
it was the Beauty who blew up the Booby, and that 
it was not she. TTho or what it was, the thing once 
for all being so effectually clone, concerns us little. To 
know Scotland, at that great epoch, were a valuable 
increase of knowledge: to know poor Darnley, and 
see him vrith burning candle, from centre to skin, 

30 



350 BOSWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. 

were no increase of knowledge at all. — Thus is His- 
tory written. 

Hence, indeed, comes it that History, which should 
" be the essence of innumerable Biographies," will tell 
us, question it as we like, less than one genuine Bio- 
graphy may do, pleasantly and of its own accord ! The 
time is approaching when History will be attempted 
on quite other principles ; when the Court, the Senate, 
and the Battle-field, receding more and more into the 
background, the Temple, the Workshop, and Social 
Hearth will advance more and more into the fore- 
ground ; and History will not content itself with 
shaping some answer to that question: How were 
men taxed and kept quiet then? but will seek to an- 
swer this other infinitely wider and higher question : 
now and what were men then ? Not our Government 
only, or the " House wherein our life was led," but the 
Life itself we led there, will be inquired into. Of 
which latter it may be found that government, in any 
modern sense of the word, is after all but a secondary 
condition : in the mere sense of Taxation and Keeping 
quiet, a small, almost a pitiful one. — Meanwhile let us 
welcome such Boswells, each in his degree, as bring 
us any genuine contribution, were it never so inade- 
quate, so inconsiderable. 



MORTE D'ARTHUR. 351 

MORTE D'ARTHUR. 

BY ALFRED TENNYSON. 

[The incidents of Tennyson's poem are thus related in La 
Mort d'Arthure of Sir Thomas Malory, vol. iii., chap. 168, pp. 
330, 331, of the edition by Thomas Wright. London, 1858. {La 
Mort d'Arthure was first issued from Caxton's press in 1485.) 

"But my time hieth fast," said King Arthur unto Sir Bedi- 
vere, "therefore take thou Excalibur* my good sword, and go 
with it unto yonder water side, and, when thou comest there, I 
charge thee throw my sword into that water, and come again 
and tell me what thou shalt see there." " My Lord," said Sir 
Bedivere, " your command shall be done, and lightlyf bring you 
word again." And so Sir Bedivere departed ; and by the way 
he beheld that noble sword where the pommel and the haft were 
all of precious stones, and then he said to himself, " If I throw 
this rich sword into the water, thereof shall never come good, 



* Excah'bur: The French romance of Merlin gives the following 
interpretation of the name : — " Escalibort est un nom Ebrieu, 
qui vault autant a dire en Franc,ois comme tres cher fer et acier, 
et aussi disoyent-il vrai." According to the English metrical 
romance of Merlin, this celebrated sword bore the following in- 
scription : — 

Ich am y-hote Escalibore ; 

Unto a King fair tresore. 
And it added in explanation, 

On Inglis is this writing, 

Kene steel and yren and al thing." 

. . . " I have forgotten [says Arthur to the Lady of the Lake] 
the name of the sword which ye gave me." " The name of it," 
said the lady, " is Excalibur, that is as much to say as " cutte- 
steele." La Mort d'Arthure, v. i., chap. 28, p. 63. 

f Lightly, quickly. 



352 MURTE DART II I I 

but harm and loss." And then Sir Bedivere hid Kxcalibur under 
a tree, and as soon as he might, he came again unto King Arthur, 
and said he had been at the water, and had thrown tin: Bword 
into the water. "What gaW6B( thou there?" Baid the King. 
"Sir/ 7 said he, "I saw nothing but waves and wind." "That 
is untruly said of thee/' laid King Arthur, " therefore go thou 
lightly* and do my command, as thou art to me lief and dear; 
spare not, but throw it in." Then Sir Bedivere returned again, 
and took the sword in his hand; and then him thought! it sin 
and shame to throw away that noble sword, and so eft:}: lie hid 
the sword, and returned again and told the King that he had 
been at the water and done his command. " What saw ye there?" 
said the King. M Sir," said he, " I saw nothing but the water 
wapg and the waves wauue."|| "Ah. traitor, untrue !" said King 
Arthur, "now hast thou betrayed me two times. Who would 
have weened that thou that hast been unto me so self and dear, 
and thou art named a noble knight, and WOuldst betray me for 
the rich sword ? But now go again lightly,* for thy long tarry- 
ing putteth me in great jeopardy of my life, for I have taken 
cold ; and but if fl thou do as I command thee, and if ever I may 
see thee, I shall slay thee with my own hands, for thou wouldst 
for my rich sword see me dead." Then Sir Bedivere departed, 
and went to the sword, and lightly took it up, and went to the 
water's side ; and there he bound the girdle about the hilts, and 
then he threw the sword into the water as far as he might; and 
there came an arm and a hand above the water, and met it and 
caught it, and so shook it thrice and brandished. 

And then the hand vanished away with the sword in the water. 
So Sir Bedivere came again to the King, and told him what he 
had seen. "Alas !" said the King, " help me from hence, for I 
dread me I have tarried over long." Then Sir Bedivere took 
King Arthur upon his back, and so went with him to the water's 
side. And when they were at the water's side, even fast by the 
bank, hoved a little barge with many fair ladies in it, and among 
them all was a Queen, and all they had black hoods, and they 
wept and shrieked when they saw King Arthur. 

* Lightly, quickly. f Him thought, it seemed to him. 

% Eft, again. § Wap, beat. 

|| Waune, roll. ^ But if, unless. 



MO RTF D ARTHUR. 353 

" Now put me into the barge," said the King ; and so he did 
softly ; and there received him three Queens with great mourn- 
ing, and so these three Queens set them down, and in one of their 
laps King Arthur laid his head. And then that Queen said, 
"Ah ! dear brother, why have ye tarried so long from me ? Alas! 
this wound on your head hath taken over much cold." And so 
then they rowed from the land, and Sir Bedivere beheld all those 
ladies go from him; then Sir Bedivere cried, "Ah! my Lord 
Arthur, what shall become of me now ye go from me, and leave 
me here alone among mine enemies?" "Comfort thyself," 
said King Arthur, " and do as well as thou mayst, for in me is 
no trust for to trust in ; for I will into the vale of Avilion for to 
heal me of my grievous wound ; and if thou never hear more 
of me, pray for my soul." But evermore the Queens and the 
ladies wept and shrieked that it was pity for to hear them. And 
as soon as Sir Bedivere had lost the sight of the barge, he wept 
and wailed, and so took the forest ; and so he went all the night, 
and in the morning he was ware between two hills of a chapel 
and an hermitage. 

George Brimley, in his able essay on Tennyson's Poems, re- 
marks of the Morte d 'Arthur : " Since John Dryden died, no 
English poet has written verse so noble, so sonorous, of such 
sustained majesty and might ; no English poet has brought pic- 
tures so clear and splendid before the eye by the power of single 
epithets and phrases ; and Dryden himself never wrote a poem 
so free from careless lines, unmeaning words, and conventional 
epithets. The fragment bursts upon us like the blended blasts 
and wail of the trumpets of pursuing and retreating hosts: a 
whole day's alternate victory and defeat, a series of single com- 
bats, the death of the leaders one by one, the drawing off of the 
armies at sunset, King Arthur alone and wounded on the field, 
the coming on of night and the rising of the moon, the approach 
of King Arthur's last captain to bear him to a place of shelter, 
are pictured to the imagination in the few vigorous lines that 
commence the poem.] 



30* 



354 MOKTE DWRTHLH 

§0 all day long the noise of battle roll'd 
Among the mountains by the winter sea; 
Until King Arthur's table, man by man, 
Had fall'n in Lyonness about their Lord, 
King Arthur: then, because hia wound was deep, 
The bold Sir Bedivere uplifted him, 
Sir Bedivere, the last of all his knights, 
And bore him to a chapel nigh the field, 
A broken chancel with a broken cross, 
That stood on a dark strait of barren land. 
On one side lay the Ocean, and on one 
Lay a great water,* and the moon was full. 

Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere : 
"The sequel of to-day unsolders all 
The goodliest fellowship of famous knights 
Whereof this world holds record. Such a sleep 
They sleep — the men I loved. I think that we 
Shall never more, at any future time, 
Delight our souls with talk of knightly deeds, 



* That phrase, " a great water," has probably often been ridi- 
culed as affected phraseology for "a great lake ;" but it is an 
instance of the intense presentative power of Mr. Tennyson's 
genius. It precisely marks the appearance of a large lake out- 
spread and taken in at one glance from a high ground. Had 
" a great lake" been substituted for it, the phrase would have 
needed to be translated by the mind into water of a certain 
shape and size before the picture was realized by the imagina- 
tion. " A great lake" is, in fact, one degree removed from the 
sensuous to the logical, — from the individual appearance to 
the generic name, and is therefore less poetic and pictorial. — 
Brimley. 



MORTE D' ARTHUR. 355 

"Walking about the gardens and the halls 
Of Camelot, as in the days that were. 
I perish by this people which I made, — 
Tho' Merlin, sware that I should come again 
To rule once more — but let what will be, be, 
I am so deeply smitten thro' the helm 
That without help I cannot last till morn. 
Thou therefore take my brand Excalibur, 
Which was my pride : for thou rememberest how 
In those old days, one summer noon, an arm 
Hose up from out the bosom of the lake, 
Clothed in white samite,* mystic, wonderful, 
Holding the sword — and how I row'd across 
And took it, and have worn it, like a king : f 
And, wheresoever I am sung or told 
In aftertime, this also shall be known : 

* A very rich silk, sometimes interwoven with gold or silver 
thread. 

f And so Merlin and he departed, and as they rode King Ar- 
thur said, "I have no sword." "No force [no matter]," said 
Merlin, " hereby is a sword that shall be yours and [if] I may." 
So they rode till they came to a lake, which was a fair water and 
a broad, and in the midst of the lake King Arthur was ware of 
an arm clothed in white samite, that held a fair sword in the hand. 
" Lo," said Merlin to the King, "yonder is the sword that I 
spake of." With that they saw a damsel going upon the lake. 
" What damsel is that ?" said the King. " That is the lady of 
the lake," said Merlin, "and within that lake is a rock, and 
therein is as fair a place as any is on earth, and richly beseen, 
and this damsel will come to you anon, and then speak fair to 
her that she will give you the sword." Therewith came the 
damsel to King Arthur and saluted him, and he her again. 
" Damsel," said the King, " what sword is that which the arm 



356 MORTE D ART III U 

But now delay not: take Excalibur, 

And fling him i'ar into the middle mere:* 

Watcli what thou seest, and lightlyf bring me word." 

To him replied the bold Sir Bedn 
"It is not meet, Sir Kin--, to Leave thee thus, 
Aidless, alone, and smitten thro 1 the helm. 
A little thing ma\ harm a wounded man. 
Yet I thy hestj will all perform at lull, 
Watch what I Bee, and lightly bring thee word." 

So saying, from the ruin'd Bhrine he Btept 
And in the moon athwart the place of tombs, 
Where lav the mighty bones oi* ancient men, 
Old knights, and over them the sea-wind sang 
Shrill, chill, with Hakes of foam. lie, stepping down 
By zig-zag paths, and juts of pointed rock, 
Came on the shining levels of the lake.g 

holdeth yonder above the water? I would it were mine, for I 
have no sword/' " Sir King," said the damsel of the lake, " that 
sword is mine, and if ye will give me a gift when I ask it you, 
ye shall have it." "By my faith/' said King Arthur, "I will 
give you any gift that yon will ask or desire." "Well," said the 
damsel, " go ye into yonder barge, and row yourself unto the 
sword, and take it and the scabbard with you, and I will ask my 
gift when I see my time." So King Arthur and Merlin alighted, 
tied their horses to two trees, and so they went into the barge. 
And when they came to the sword that the hand held, King 
Arthur took it by the handle, and took it with him ; and the 
arm and the hand went under the water ; and so [they] came to 
the land and rode forth. — 

La Mart d'Arthure, V. I, chap. 23, p. 54. 

* A lake. f Quickly. X Hest, i. e., behest, command. 

§ With what distinctness, with what force and conciseness of 
language, is the whole scene of the churchyard, with its assoeia- 



MORTE D'ARTHUR, 357 

There drew he forth, the brand Excalibur, 
And o'er him, drawing it, the winter moon, 
Brightening the skirts of a long cloud, ran forth 
And sparkled keen with frost against the hilt : 
For all the haft twinkled with diamond sparks, 
Myriads of topaz-lights, and jacinth-work 
Of subtlest jewellery. He gazed so long 
That both his eyes were dazzled, as he stood, 
This way and that dividing the swift mind,* 
In act to throw : but at the last it seem'd 
Better to leave Excalibur conceal'd 
There in the many-knotted waternags,f 
That whistled stiff and dry about the marge. 
So strode he back slow to the wounded king. 

Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere: 
M Hast thou perform'd my mission which I gave ? 
What is it thou hast seen ? or what hast heard ?" 

tions, brought before the mind : its ancestral relics, the ruins of 
the chapel, the piercing cold of the night-wind, edged with sea- 
salt, the sharp rocks down which the path to the lake descends. 
. . . The classical cequora may have suggested the "shining 
levels ;" but there is a deeper reason for the change of phrase, for 
the "great water," as seen from the high ground, becomes a 
series of flashing surfaces when Sir Bedivere looks along it from 
its margin. — Brimley. 

* This way and that dividing the swift mind : compare YirgiPs 
JEneid, IV., 285 : " Atque animum nunc hue celerem, nunc 
dividit illuc." 

f The "many-knotted waterflags" are not brought in simply 
to hide Excalibur, they must add their life to the picture, and 

Whistle stiff and dry about the marge. — Brimley. 



358 MORTE D'ARTUUR. 

Ami answer made the bold Sir Bedivere: 
"] heard the ripple washing in the reeds,* 
And the wild water lapping on the crag." 

To whom replied King Arthur, faint and pale : 
"Thou hast betray'd thy nature ami thy name, 
Not rendering true answer, as beseem'd 
Thy fealty, nor like a noble knight: 
For surer sign had follow'd, either hand, 
Or voice, or else a motion of the mere. 
This is a shameful thing for men to lie. 
Yet now, I charge thee, quickly go again 
As thou art lief and dear, and do the thing 
1 bad thee, watch, and lightly bring me word." 

Then went Sir Bedivere the second time 
Across the ridge, and paced beside the mere, 
Counting the dewy pebbles, f flx'd in thought ; 
But when he saw the wonder of the hilt, 
How curiously and strangely chased, he smote 
His palms together, and he cried aloud: 

* The most delicate distinctions of phenomena are noted that 
serve as an aid to our complete realization of the scene. Sir 
Bedivere hears 

The ripple washing in the reeds, 
and 

The wild water lapping on the crags; 

'the two phrases marking exactly the difference of sound pro- 
duced by water swelling up against a permeable or impermeable 
barrier. — Brimley. 

f " Counting the dewy pebbles " is an instance of an interesting 
psychological fact, namely, the minute observation which ac- 
companies intensity of thought and feeling. — Editor. 



MORTE D' ARTHUR. 359 

" And if indeed- 1 cast the brand away, 
Surely a precious tiling, one worthy note, 
Should thus be lost for ever from the earth, 
Which might have pleased the eyes of many men. 
What 2,'ood should follow this, if this were done ? 
What harm, undone ? deep harm to disobey, 
Seeing obedience is the bond of rule. 
Were it well to obey then, if a king demand 
An act unprofitable, against himself? 
The King is sick, and knows not what he does. 
"What record, or what relic of my lord 
Should be to aftertime, but empty breath 
And rumours of a doubt ? but were this kept, 
Stored in some treasure-house of mighty kings, 
Some one might show it at a joust of arms, 
Saying, 'King Arthur's sword, Excalibur, 
Wrought by the lonely maiden of the Lake. 
Nine years she wrought it, sitting in the deeps 
Upon the hidden bases of the hills.' 
So might some old man speak in the aftertime 
To all the people, winning reverence. 
But now much honour and much fame were lost." 

So spake he, clouded with his own conceit, 
And hid Excalibur the second time, 
And so strode back slow to the wounded King. 

Then spoke King Arthur, breathing heavily : 
" What is it thou hast seen ? or what hast heard ?" 

And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere : 



360 MORTE DA 11 TIUR. 

"I heard the water lapping on the crag, 
And the long ripple washing in the reeds." 

To whom replied King Arthur, much in wrath: 
"Ah, miserable and unkind, untrue, 
Unknightly, traitor-hearted I Woe is me! 
Authority forgets a dying king, 
Laid widow'd of the power in bis eye 
That bow'd the will.* 1 Bee thee whal thou art, 
For thou, the latest-left of all my knights, 
In whom should meet the offices of all, 
Thou wouldst betray me for fche precious hilt; 
Either from lust of gold, or like a girl 
Valuing the giddy pleasure of the eyes. 
Yet, for a man may fail in duty twice, 
And the third time may prosper, get thee hence : 
But, if thou spare to fling Exoalibur, 
I will arise and slay thee with my hands." 

Then quickly rose Sir Bedivere, and ran, 
And, leaping down the ridges lightly, plunged 

* How thoroughly Shakespearian is King Arthur's lament, 

Woe is me ! 
Authority forgets a dying king, 
Laid widow'd of the power in his eye 
That bow'd the will, 

where the personification assists the imagination without dis- 
tressing the understanding, as when dwelt upon, and expanded 
in detail ; deepening the impressiveness of the sentiment by 
giving along with a true thought a grand picture, — just such a 
passing flash of impassioned rhetoric as would become the highest 
oratory, and thrill the hearts of a great assembly. — Brimley, 



MORTE D'ARTHUR. 361 

Among the bulrush-beds, and clutch'd the sword, 
And strongly wheel'd and threw it. The great brand 
Made lightnings in the splendour of the moon, 
And flashing round and round, and whirl' d in an arch, 
Shot like a streamer of the northern morn, 
Seen where the moving isles of winter shock 
By night, with noises of the northern sea. 
So flash'd and fell the brand Excalibur:* 
But ere he dipt the surface, rose an arm 
Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful, 
And caught him by the hilt, and brandish'd him 
Three times, and drew him under in the mere. 
And lightly went the other to the King. 

Then spoke King Arthur, drawing thicker breath : 

* In the description of Sir Bedivere's last and successful at- 
tempt to throw the sword into the lake, every word tells of rapid, 
agitated, determined action, refusing to dally with the tempta- 
tion that had twice overcome him. .... A series of bril- 
liant effects is hit off in those two words, " made lightnings/' 
" Whirl' d in an arch/' is a splendid instance of sound answer- 
ing to sense, which the older critics made so much of; the ad- 
ditional syllable which breaks the measure, and necessitates an 
increased rapidity of utterance, seeming to espress to the ear 
the rush of the sword up its parabolic curve. And with what 
lavish richness of presentative power is the boreal aurora, the 
collision, the crash, and the thunder of the meeting icebergs, 
brought before the eye. An inferior artist would have shouted 
through a page, and emptied a whole pallet of colour, without 
any result but interrupting his narrative, where Tennyson in 
three lines strikingly illustrates the fact he had to tell, — as- 
sociates it impressively with one of nature's grandest phenomena, 
and gives a complete picture of this phenomenon besides. 
31 



362 MORTE DA 11TIIUR. 

"Now see I by thine eyes that this is done* 

Speak out: whal is it thou hasl heard, or seen?" 

And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere: 

"Sir King, I closed mine eyelids, lest the gems 
Should blind my purpose, for I never saw, 
Nor shall see, here or elsewhere, till I die, 
Not tho' I live three lives of mortal men, 
So great a miracle as yonder hilt. 
Then with both hands I flung him, wheeling him ; 
But when I look'd again, behold an arm, 
Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful, 
That caught him by the hilt, and brandish'd him 
Three times, and drew him under in the mere." 

And answer made King Arthur, breathing hard : 
" My end draws nigh ; 'tis time that I were gone. 
Make broad thy shoulders to receive my weight, 
And bear me to the margin ; yet I fear 
My wound hath taken cold, and I shall die." 

So saying, from the pavement he half rose, 
Slowly, with pain, reclining on his arm, 
And looking wistfully, with wide blue eyes, 
As in a picture.f Him Sir Bedivere 
Remorsefully regarded thro' his tears, 

* How dramatic and striking is King Arthur's sudden excla- 
mation on Sir Bedivere's return : 

"Now see I by thine eyes that this is done/' 

f How wonderfully true of a dying man, the 

Looking wistfully, with wide blue eyes, 
As in a picture. — Brimley. 



MORTE D'ARTHUR. 363 

And would have spoken, but lie found not words 
Then took with care, and kneeling on one knee, 
O'er both his shoulders drew the languid hands, 
And rising bore him thro' the place of tombs. 

But, as he walk'd, King Arthur panted hard, 
Like one that feels a nightmare on his bed 
"When all the house is mute. So sigh'd the King, 
Muttering and murmuring at his ear " Quick, quick ! 
I fear it is too late, and I shall die." 
But the other swiftly strode from ridge to ridge, 
Clothed with his breath, and looking, as he walk'd, 
Larger than human on the frozen hills.* 
He heard the deep behind him, and a cry 
Before. His own thought drove him like a goad. 
Dry clash'd his harness in the icy caves 
And barren chasms, and all to left and right 
The bare black cliff clang'd round him, as he based 
His feet on juts of slippery crag that rang 
Sharp-smitten with the dint of armed heels — 
And on a sudden, lo! the level lake, 
And the long glories of the winter moon. 

Then saw they how there hove a dusky barge, 
Dark as a funeral scarf from stem to stern, 
Beneath them ; and descending they were ware 

* How pictorial and minutely attentive to the faets of appear- 
ance, — 

But the other strode from ridge to ridge, 

Clothed with his breath, and looking, as he walk'd, 

Larger than human on the frozen hills. — Brimley. 



364 WORTS D ARTHUR. 

That all the detekfl were dense with stately forms 
Black-stoled, black -hooded, like a dream — by the* 

Three Queens with crowns of gold — and from them 

rose 
A cry that shiverM to the tingling stars,* 
And, as it were one voice, an agony 
Of lamentation, like a wind, that shrills 

* In some over-fastidious moods, one might he inclined to 
charge 

A cry that shirt nd to the tingling stars, 

with a touch of that exaggeration which belongs to the "spas- 
modic school ;" but the cry conns from a company of spirits, 
amid mountains whose natural power of echo is heightened by 
the silence of night, the clearness of the winter air, and the 
hardening effect of frost. Such a cry at such a time, and in 
such a place, would thrill from rock to rock, from summit to 
summit, till it seemed to pierce the sky in a hurtling storm of 
multitudinous arrowy sounds, and die away in infinitely distant 
pulsations among the stars. In the following lines, where the 
agony of lamentation is compared to 

A wind that shrills 
All night in a waste land, where no one comes, 
Or hath come, since the making of the world, — 

the passage italicised may seem at first to add nothing to the 
force of the comparison, as the shrillness of the wind would not 
be greater in an uninhabited place than anywhere else in open 
ground. But the mournfulness of the feeling a man would ex- 
perience in such a place, from the sense of utter isolation and 
sterility, is blended with the naturally sad wail of the wind over 
a wide waste, and the addition thus becomes no mere completion 
of a thought of which only part is wanted for the illustration — 
though that were allowable enough, according to ordinary poetic 
usage, — but gives a heightening of sentiment without which the 
illustration itself would be incomplete and less impressive. — 
Brimley. 



MORTE D'ARTHUR. 365 

All night in a waste land, where no one comes, 
Or hath come, since the faking of the world. 

Then murmur 'd Arthur, " Place me in the barge," 
And to the barge they came. There those three 

Queens 
Put forth their hands, and took the King, and wept. 
But she, that rose the tallest of them all 
And fairest, laid his head upon her lap, 
And loosed the shatter'd casque, and chafed his hands, 
And called him by his name, complaining loud, 
And dropping bitter tears against his brow 
Striped with dark blood : for all his face was white 
And colourless, and like the wither'd moon 
Smote by the fresh beam of the springing east ; 
And all his greaves'* and cuissesf dash'd with drops 
Of onset ; \ and the light and lustrous curls — 
That made his forehead like a rising sun 
High from the dais-throne — were parch'd with dust ; 
Or, clotted into points and hanging loose, 
Mix'd with the knightly growth that fringed his lips. 
So like a shattered column lay the King ; 
Not like that Arthur who, with lance in rest, 
Prom spur to plume a star of tournament, 
Shot thro' the lists at Camelot, and charged 
Before the eyes of ladies and of kings. § 

* Greaves, armour for the legs, 
f Cuisses, armour for the thighs. 
% Onset, the cause for the result, by metonymy. 
I The passage in which Arthur is described as dying in the 
arms of the mourning Queen, is a fine instance of a poetical use 
31* 



3G6 morti: D'A irru i n. 

Then loudly cried the bold Sir Bedivere, 
"Ah! my Lord Arthur, whither shall I go? 
Where shall I hide my forehead and my eyes? 
For now I see the true old tim< s are dead, 
When every morning brought a noble chance, 
And every chance brought out a noble knight. 
Such times have been not since the light that led 
The holy Elders with the gift of myrrh. 
But now the whole BOUND TABLE is dissolved 
Which was an image of the mighty world ; 
And I, the last, go forth companionless, 
And the days darken round me, and the years, 
Among new men, strange faces, other minds." 

And slowly answered Arthur from the barge : 
" The old order changeth, yielding place to new, 
And God fulfils himself in many ways, 

of simile and figure. The moon fading in the early morning, the 
dazzling brightness of the rising sun, the shattered column, the 
glancing flight of a shooting star, bring before the mind not only 
the dying King, pale and bleeding, but the contrast between his 
present weakness and the glory and triumphs of his chival- 
rous and brilliant life. In a few lines his whole story is told : 
it is not merely a dying warrior who lies before us, but the 
strength, the state, the splendour, and enjoyment of his past 
life, flash before the imagination, and deepen the sadness and 
humiliation of his defeat and death. — Brimley. 

Tennyson, in his Palace of Art, makes the dying Arthur, at- 
tended by the queens, one of the scenes represented on the arras 
'with which the rooms of the palace were hung: 

" Mythic Uther's deeply-wounded son 

In some fair space of sloping greens 

Lay, dozing in the vale of Avalon, 

And watch' d by weeping queens." — Editor. 



MORTE D'ARTHUR. 36T 

Lest one good custom should corrupt the world. 

Comfort thyself: what comfort is in me? 

I have lived my life, and that which I have done 

May He within himself make pure ! but thou, 

If thou shouldst never see my face again, 

Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by 

prayer 
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice 
Eise like a fountain for me night- and day. 
For what are men better than sheep or goats 
That nourish a blind life within the brain, 
If, knowing Grod, they lift not hands of prayer 
Both for themselves and those- who call them friend? 
For so the whole round earth is every way 
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God. 
But now farewell. T am going a long way 
With these thou seest — if indeed I go — 
(For all my mind is clouded with a doubt) 
To the island- valley of Avilion ; 
Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow, 
Nor ever wind blows loudly ; but it lies 
Deep-meadow'd, happy, fair with orchard-lawns 
And bowery hollows crown'd with summer sea, 
Where I will heal me of my grievous wound." 
So said he, and the barge with oar and sail 
Moved from the brink, like some full-breasted swan 
That, fluting a wild carol ere her death, 
Ruffles her pure cold plume, and takes the flood 



368 ODE TO THE WEST WIND. 

With swarthy webs. Long stood Sir Bedivere 
Eevolving many memories, till the hull 
Look'd one black dot against the verge of dawn, 
And on the mere the wailing died away. 



ODE TO THE WEST WIND* 
BY PERCY BTS^HS SHELLEY. 



WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's 
being, 

Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead 
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, 



f 



Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, 
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: thou, 
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed 

* This poem was conceived and chiefly written in a wood that 
skirts the Arno, near Florence, and on a day when that tem- 
pestuous wind, whose temperature is at once mild and animating, 
was collecting the vapours which pour down the autumnal rains. 
They began, as I foresaw, at sunset, with a violent tempest of 
hail and rain, attended by that magnificent thunder and light- 
ning peculiar to the Cisalpine regions. 

The phenomenon alluded to at the conclusion of the third 
stanza is well known to naturalists. The vegetation at the bot- 
tom of the sea, of rivers, and of lakes, sympathizes with that of 
the land in the change of seasons, and is consequently influenced 
by the winds which announce it. 



ODE TO THE WEST WIND. 369 

The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, 
Each like a corpse within its grave, until 
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow 

Her clarion o'er the dreaming Earth, and fill 
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) 
With living hues and odours plain and hill : 

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere ; 
Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear! 

II. 

Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commo- 
tion, 
Loose clouds like Earth's decaying leaves are shed, 
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean, 

Angels of rain and "lightning : there are spread 
On the blue surface of thine airy surge, 
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head 

Of some fierce Msenad, even from the dim verge 

Of the horizon to the zenith's height, 

The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge 

Of the dying year, to which this closing night 
"Will be the doom of a vast sepulchre, 
Yaulted with all thy congregated might 

Of vapours from whose solid atmosphere 

Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst : Oh hear ! 



370 ODE TO THE WEST WIND. 

III. 

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams 
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, 
Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams, 

Beside a pumice isle in Baias's bay, 
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers 
Quivering within the wave's intenser day, 

All overgrown with azure moss and flowers 

So sweet, the sense faints picturing them ! Thou 

For whose path the Atlantic's level powers 

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below 
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear 
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know 

Thy voice and suddenly grow gray with fear, 
And tremble and despoil themselves : Oh hear ! 

IV. 

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear 

If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee ; 

A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share 

F, 

The impulse of thy strength, only less free 
Than thou, uncontrollable ! If even • 
I were as in my boyhood, and could be 



ODE TO THE WEST WIND. 3U 

The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven, 
As then, when to outstrip the skyey speed 
Scarce seemed a vision, I would ne'er have striven 

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. 
Oh ! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud ! 
I fall upon the thorns of life ! I bleed ! 

A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed 
One too like thee : tameless, and swift, and proud. 

V. 

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is : 
What if my leaves are falling like its own I 
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies 

Will take from both a deep autumnal tone, 
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, spirit fierce, 
My spirit ! Be thou me, impetuous one ! 

Drive my dead thoughts over the Universe,. 
Like wither'd leaves to quicken a new birth ; 
And, by the incantation of this verse, 

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth 
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind ! 
Be through my lips to unawakened earth 

The trumpet of a prophecy ! wind, 

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind ? 



372 BE A U TY A R E EL E X ft F J f) Y. 



THE BEAUTY OF THE OUTER WORLD A 
REFLEX OF A PURE AND JOYOUS 
SOUL. 

FROM "DKJECTIOX: AN I) K ." 



8 



BY SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 

LADY ! we receive but what we give, 

And in our life alone does nature live: 
Ours is her wedding-garment, ours her shroud! 

And would we aught behold of higher worth, 
Than that inanimate cold world allowed 
To the poor loveless ever-anxious crowd, 

Ah I from the soul itself must issue forth 
A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud 

Enveloping the Earth — 
And from the soul itself must there be sent 

A sweet and potent voice, of its own birth, 
Of all sweet sounds the life and element ! 

O pure of heart ! thou need'st not ask of me 
"What this strong music in the soul may be ! 
What, and wherein it doth exist, 
This light, this glory, this fair luminous mist, 
This beautiful and beauty-making power. 

Joy, virtuous Lady ! Joy that ne'er was given, 
Save to the pure, and in their purest hour, 



CHRISTABEL. 373 

Life, and Life's Effluence, Cloud at once and Shower, 
Joy, Lady! is the spirit and the power, 
Which wedding Nature gives to us in dower, 

A new Earth and new Heaven, 
Undreamt of by the sensual and the proud — 
Joy is the sweet voice, Joy the luminous cloud — 

We in ourselves rejoice! 
And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight, 

All melodies the echoes of that voice, 
All colours a suffusion from that light. 



EXTRACT FROM COLERIDGE'S "CHRIS- 
TABEL." 

[The following portion of the First Part of " Christabel," is, 
perhaps, the most perfect example of the adaptation of the verse 
and all the various elements of musical and suggestive expressive- 
ness, to the sentiment, which English Poetry affords. — [Editor.] 

£Tf IS the middle of night by the castle clock, 

\K/ And the owls have awakened the crowing cock : 

Tu— whit ! Tu— whoo ! 

And hark, again! the crowing cock, 
How drowsily it crew. 

Sir Leoline, the Baron rich, 

Hath a toothless mastiff bitch ; 
32 



374 r II R I ST ABEL. 

From her kennel beneath the rock 

She maketh answer to the clock, 

Four for the quarters, and twelve for the hour ; 

Ever and aye, by shine and shower, 

Sixteen short howls, not over loud; 

Some say, she sees my lady's shroud. 

Is the night chilly and dark? 
The night is chilly, but not dark. 
The thin grey cloud is spread on high, 
It covers but not hides the sky. 
The moon is behind, and at the full ; 
And yet she looks both small and dull. 
The night is chill, the cloud is grey: 
'Tis a month before the month of May, 
And the Spring comes slowly up this way. 

The lovely lady, Christabel, 

Whom her father loves so well, 

What makes her in the wood so late, 

A furlong from the castle^ate?- 

She had dreams all yesternight 

Of her own betrothed knight; 

And she in the midnight wood will pray 

For the weal of her lover that's far away. 

She stole along, she nothing spoke, 
The sighs she heaved were soft and low, 
And naught was green upon the oak, 
But moss and rarest mistletoe: 



CHRISTABEL. 375 

She kneels beneath the huge oak tree ; 
And in silence prayeth she. 

The lady sprang up suddenly, 

The lovely lady, Christabel! 

It moaned as near, as near can be, 

But what it is she cannot tell. — 

On the other side it seems to be, 

Of the huge, broad-breasted, old oak tree. 

The night is chill ; the forest bare ; 
Is it the wind that moaneth bleak? 
There is not wind enough in the air 
To move away the ringlet curl 
From the lovely lady's cheek — 
There is not wind enough to twirl 
The one red leaf, the last of its clan, 
That dances as often as dance it can, 
Hanging so light, and hanging so high, 
On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky. 

Hush, beating heart of Christabel! 
Jesu, Maria, shield her well! 
She folded her arms beneath her cloak, 
And stole to the -other side of the oak. 
What sees she there ? 

There she sees a damsel bright, 
Drest in a silken robe of white, 



370 CHRISTABEL. 

That shadowy in the moonlight shone: 
The neck that made that white robe wan, 
Her stately neck and arms were hare ; 
Her blue- veined feet unsandal'd were, 
And wildly glittered here and there 

gems entangled in her hair. 
I ciess 'twaa frightful there to see 
A lady BO richly clad as she — 
B autiful exceedingly ! 

Mary mother, save mc now! 

(Said Christabel,) And who art thou? 

The lady strange made answer meet, 

And her voice was faint and sweet: — 

" Have pity on my sore distress, 

I scarce can speak for weariness 

Stretch forth thy hand, and have no fear I " 

Said Christabel: "How earnest thou here?" 

And the lady, whose voice was faint and sweet, 

Did thus pursue her answer meet: — 

" My sire is of a noble line, 
And my name is Geraldine: 

Five warriors seized me yestermorn, 

Me, even me, a maid forlorn: 

They choked my cries with force and fright, 

And tied me on a palfrey white. 



CHRISTABEL. 3TT 

The palfrey was as fleet as wind, 

And they rode furiously behind. 

They spurred amain, their steeds were white: 

And once we crossed the shade of night. 

As sure as Heaven shall rescue me, 

I have no thought what men they be; 

!Nor do I know how long it is 

(For I have lain entranced I wis) 

Since one, the tallest of the five, 

Took me from the palfrey's back, 

A weary woman, scarce alive. 

Some muttered words his comrades spoke 

He placed me underneath this oak; 

He swore they would return with haste: 

Whither they went I cannot tell — 

T thought I heard, some minutes past, 

Sounds as of a castle bell. 

Stretch forth thy hand (thus ended she), 

And help a wretched maid to flee." 

Then Christabel stretched forth her hand 
And comforted fair Greraldine : 
" well, bright dame ! may you command 
The service of Sir Leoline ; 
And gladly our stout chivalry 
"Will he send forth and friends withal 
To guide and guard you safe and free 
Home to your noble father's hall." 
32* 



378 CHRIST A BEL. 

She rose : and forth with steps they passed 

That strove to be, and were not, fast. 

Her gracious stars the lady blest, 

And thus spake on sweet Christabel: 

"AH our household are at rest, 

The hall as Bilent as the cell; 

Sir Leoline is weak in health, 

And may not well awakened be, 

Bui we will move as if in stealth, 

And I beseech your court* - 

This night, to Bhare your couch with me." 

They crossed the moat, and Christabel 

Took the key that fitted wi 

A little door she opened straight, 

All in the middle of the gate ! 

The gate that was ironed within and without, 

Where an army in battle array had marched out. 

The lady sank, belike through pain, 

And Christabel with might and main 

Lifted her up, a weary weight, 

Over the threshold of the gate : 

Then the lady rose again, 

And moved, as she were not in pain. 

So free from danger, free from fear, 
They crossed the court : right glad they were. 
And Christabel devoutly cried 
To the lady by her side : 



CHRISTABEL. 319 

"Praise we the Yirgin all divine 

Who hath rescued thee from thy distress!" 

"Alas, alas!" said Greraldine, 

"I cannot speak for weariness." 

So free from danger, free from fear, 

They crossed the court : right glad they were. 

Outside her kennel, the mastiff old 
Lay fast asleep, in moonshine cold. 
The mastiff old did not awake, 
Yet she an angry moan did make! 
And what can ail the mastiff bitch? 
Never till now she uttered yell 
Beneath the eye of Ghristabel. 
Perhaps it is the owlet's scritch: 
For what can ail the mastiff bitch? 

They passed the hall, that echoes still, 

Pass as lightly as you will! 

The brands were flat, the brands were dying, 

Amid their own white ashes lying; 

But when the lady passed, there came 

A tongue of light, a fit of flame; 

And Christabel saw the lady's eye, 

And nothing else saw she thereby, 

Save the boss of the shield of Sir Leoline tall, 

Which hung in a murky old niche in the wall. 

"O softly tread," said Christabel, 

"My father seldom sleepeth well." 



380 CnRISTABEL. 

Sweet Christabel her feet doth bare, 

And, jealous of the listening air, 

They steal their way from stair to stair, 

Now in glimmer, and now in gloorn 

And now they pass the Baron's room, 

As still as death with stifled breath! 

And now have reached her chamber door; 

And now doth Geraldine press down 

The rushes of the chamber floor. 

The moon shines dim in the open air, 

And not a moonbeam enters here. 

But they without its Light can see 
The chamber carved bo curiously, 
Carved with figures strange and sweet, 
All made out of the carver's brain, 

i lady's chamber meet: 
Th ■ lamp with twofold silver chain 

itened to an angel's feet, 
The silver lamp burns dead and dim; 
But Christabel the lamp will trim. 
She trimmed the lamp, and made it bright, 
And left it swinging to and fro, 
While Geraldine, in wretched plight, 
Sank down upon the floor below. 



PASSAGES FROM "PARADISE LOST." 381 



PASSAGES FROM MILTON' S "PARADISE 

LOST." 

SATAN EECOVEES FEOM HIS DOWNFALL 
AND AEOUSES HIS LEGIONS WHO LIE 
ENTEANCED ON THE BURNING LAKE. 

the superior Fiend 

Was moving toward the shore, his ponderous shield, 

Etherial temper, massy, large, and round, 

Behind him cast. The broad circumference 

Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb 

Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views 

At evening from the top of Fesole, 

Or in Yaldarno, to , descry new lands, 

Rivers or mountains in her spotty globe. 

His spear- — to equal which the tallest pine 

Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast 

Of some great ammiral, were but a wand — 

He walked with, to support uneasy steps 

Over the burning marie, not like those steps 

On Heaven's azure ; and the torrid clime 

Smote on him sore besides, vaulted with fire. 

Kathless he so endured, till on the beach 

Of that inflamed sea he stood, and called 

His legions, Angel-forms, who lay entranced, 

Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks 



382 PASSAGES FROM "PARADISE LOST." 

In Vallombrosa, where the Etrurian shades 

High over-arched embower ; or scattered sedge 

Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion armed 

Hath vexed the Red-Sea coast, whose waves o'erthrew 

Busiris and his Memphian chivalry, 

While with perfidious hatred they pursued 

The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld 

From the safe shore their floating carcases 

And broken chariot-whe I hick bestrown, 

Abject and lost, lay these, covering the flood, 

Under amazement of their bideous change. 

lie called so loud, that all the hollow deep 

Of Hell resounded : — " Princes, Potentates, 

Warriors, the flower of Heaven, once yours, now lost, 

If such astonishment as this can seize 

Eternal Spirits. Or have ye chosen this place 

After the toil of battle to repose 

Your wearied virtue, for the ease you find 

To slumber here, as in the vales of Heaven ? 

Or in this abject posture have ye sworn 

To adore the conqueror — who now beholds 

Cherub and Seraph rolling in the flood, 

With scattered arms and ensigns — till anon 

His swift pursuers from Heaven-gates discern 

The advantage, and descending tread us down, 

Thus drooping, or with linked thunderbolts 

Transfix us to the bottom of this gulf? — 

Awake ! arise ! or be for ever fallen !" 

Book I. v. 283-330. 



PASSAGES FROM "PARADISE LOST." 383 



DESCRIPTION OF SATAN", 



He, above the rest 



In shape and gesture proudly eminent, 
Stood like a tower ; his form had yet not lost 
All her original brightness, nor appeared 
Less than Archangel ruined, and the excess 
Of glory obscured. As when the sun new-risen 
Looks through the horizontal misty air 
Shorn of his beams, or, from behind the moon, 
In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds 
On half the nations, and with fear of change 
Perplexes monarchs : darkened so, yet shone 
Above them all, the Archangel ; but his face 
Deep scars of thunder had intrenched, and care 
Sat on his faded cheek, but under brows 
Of dauntless courage and considerate pride, 
Waiting revenge. 

Book I. v. 589-604. 

PANDEMONIUM AND ITS ARCHITECT. 

— Let those 



Who boast in mortal things, and wondering tell 
Of Babel and the works of Memphian kings, 
Lieam-how^heir greatest monuments of fame 
And strength and art are easily outdone 
By Spirits reprobate, and in an hour 
What in an age they, with incessant toil 



384 PASSAGES FROM "PARADISE LOST: 1 

And hands innumerable, scarce perform. 

Nigli on the plain in many cells prepared, 

That underneath had veins of liquid fire 

Sluiced from the lake, a second multitude 

With wondrous art founded the massy ore, 

Severing each kind, and scummed the bullion dro 

A third as soon had formed within the ground 

A various mould, and from the boiling cells 

By strange conveyance filled each hollow nook : 

As in an organ, from one blast of wind, 

To many a row of pipes the sound-board breathes. 

Anon out of the earth a fabric huge 

Rose, like an exhalation, with the sound 

Of dulcet symphonies and voices sweet, 

Built like a temple, where pilasters round 

Were set, and Doric pillars overlaid 

With golden architrave ; nor did there want 

Cornice or frieze, with bossy sculptures graven ; 

The roof was fretted gold. Not Babylon 

ISTor great Alcairo such magnificence 

Equalled in all their glories, to inshrine 

Belus or Serapis their gods, or seat 

Their kings, when Egypt with Assyria strove 

In wealth and luxury. The ascending pile 

Stood fixed her stately highth, and straight the doors, 

Opening their brazen folds, discover, wide 

Within, her ample spaces, o'er the smooth 

And level pavement. From the arched roof, 

Pendent by subtle magic, many a row 



PASSAGES FROM "PARADISE LOST." 385 

Of starry lamps and blazing cressets, fed 

With, naphtha and asphaltus, yielded light 

As from a sky. The hasty multitude 

Admiring entered, and the work some praise, 

And some the architect. His hand was known 

In Heaven by many a towered structure high, 

Where sceptred angels held their residence, 

And sat as princes, whom the supreme King 

Exalted to such power, and gave to rule, 

Each in his hierarchy, the orders bright: 

Nor was his name unheard or unadored 

In ancient Greece; and in Ausonian land 

Men called him Mulciber ; and how he fell 

From Heaven they fabled, thrown by angry Jove 

Sheer o'er the crystal battlements ; from morn 

To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve, 

A summer's day ; and with the setting sun 

Dropt from the zenith, like a falling star, 

On Lemnos, the iEgasan isle. Thus they relate, 

Erring ; for he with this rebellious rout 

Fell long before : nor aught availed him now 

To have built in Heaven high towers, nor did he 'scape 

By all his engines, but was headlong sent 

With his industrious crew to build in Hell. 

Book I. v. 692-752. 

33 



386 PASSAGES FROM "PA RA I> I S E LOST. 



SATAN ON THE WING FOR EARTH, AND HIS 
MEETING WITH SIN AND DEATH ATHELL 
GATES. 

Meanwhile the Adversary of God and Man, 
Satan, with thoughts inflamed of highest design, 
Puts on swift wings, and toward the gates of Hell 
Explores his solitary flight. Sometimes 
He scours the right-hand coast, sometimes the left; 
Now shaves with level wing the deep; then soars 
Up to the fiery concave, towering high. 
As when for oft' at sea a fleet descried 
Hangs in the. clouds, by equinoctial winds 
Close sailing from Bengala, or the isles 
Of Ternate and Tidore, whence merchants bring 
Their spicy drugs ; they on the trading flood, 
Through the wide Ethiopian to the Cape, 
Ply stemming nightly toward the pole : so seemed 
Far off the flying Fiend. At last appear 
Hell-bounds, high reaching to the horrid roof, 
And thrice threefold the gates ; three folds were brass, 
Three iron, three of adamantine rock, 
Impenetrable, impaled with circling fire, 
Yet unconsumed. Before the gates there sat 
On either side a formidable shape ; 
The one seemed woman to the waist, and fair, 
But ended foul in many a scaly fold, 
Voluminous and vast, a serpent armed 



PASSAGES FROM "PARADISE LOST:* 387 

With mortal sting. About her middle round 
A cry of hell-hounds never ceasing barked 
With wide Cerberean mouths full loud, and rung 
A hideous peal ; yet, when they list, would creep, 
If aught disturbed their noise, into her womb, 
And kennel there, yet there still barked and howled 
Within unseen. Far less abhorred than these 
Vexed Scylla, bathing in the sea that parts 
Calabria from the hoarse Trinacrian shore; 
Nor uglier follow the night-hag, when, called 
In secret, riding through the air she comes, 
Lured with the smell of infant blood, to dance 
With Lapland witches, while the labouring moon 
Eclipses at their charms. The other shape — 
If shape it might be called that shape had none 
Distinguishable in member, joint or limb, 
Or substance might be called that shadow seemed, 
For each seemed either — black it stood as Night, 
Fierce as ten Furies, terrible as Hell, 
And shook a dreadful dart ; what seemed his head 
The likeness of a kingly crown had on. 
Satan was now at hand, and from his seat 
The monster moving, onward came as fast, 
With horrid strides ; Hell trembled as he strode. 
The undaunted Fiend what this might be admired, 
Admired, not feared — God and his Son except, 
Created thing nought valued he nor shunned — 
And with disdainful look thus first began : 
" Whence and what art thou, execrable shape ! 



388 PASSAGES FROM "P A R A D IS E L OST." 

That darest, though grim and terrible, advance 
Thy miscreated front athwart my way 
To yonder gates ? Through them I mean to pass — 
That be assured — without leai 1 of thee. 

Retire, or taste thy folly, and learn by proof, 
Hell-born! not to contend with Spirits of Heaven." 

To whom the Goblin full of wrath replied: 
"Art thou that traitor Angel ? art thou he, 
Who first broke peace in Heaven, and faith till then 
Unbroken, and, in proud rebellious arms, 
Drew after him the third part of Heaven's sons, 
Conjured against the Highest ? for which both thou 
And they, outcast from God, are here condemned 
To waste eternal days in woe and pain. 
And reckonest thou thyself with Spirits of Heaven, 
Hell-doomed ! and breathest defiance here and scorn, 
Where I reign king, and, to enrage thee more, 
Thy king and lord ? Back to thy punishment, 
False fugitive! and to thy speed add wings, 
Lest with a whip of scorpions I pursue 
Thy lingering, or with one stroke of this dart 
Strange horror seize thee, and pangs unfelt before." 

So spake the grisly Terror, and in shape, 
So speaking and so threatening, grew tenfold 
More dreadful and deform. On the other side, 
Incensed with indignation, Satan stood 
Unterrified, and like a comet burned, 
That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge, 
In the arctic sky, and from his horrid hair 



PASSAGES FROM "PARADISE LOST:' 389 

Shakes pestilence and war. Each at the head 
Levelled his deadly aim; their fatal hands 
ISTo second stroke intend; and such a frown 
Each cast at the other, as when two black clouds, 
With heaven's artillery fraught, come rattling on 
Over the Caspian, then stand front to front, 
Hovering a space, till winds the signal blow 
To join their dark encounter in mid air: 
So frowned the mighty combatants, that Hell 
Grew darker at their frown ; so matched they stood ; 
For never but once more was either like 
To meet so great a foe. And now great deeds 
Had been achieved, whereof all Hell had rung, 
Had not the snaky Sorceress, that sat 
Fast by Hell -gate and kept the fatal key, 
Risen, and with hideous outcry rushed between. 

Book II. v. 629-726. 

THE EXPULSION OF THE EEBEL ANGELS 
FROM HEAVEN. 

[Kaphael relates to Adam how Michael and Gabriel were sent 
forth to battle against Satan and his angels. On the third day, 
when all Heaven is in confusion, the Deity interposes, and sends 
forth the Messiah to end the contest, and expel the rebel host 
from Heaven :] 

Go then, thou Mightiest, in thy father's might, 
Ascend my chariot, guide the rapid wheels 
That shake Heaven's basis, bring forth all my war, 
My bow and thunder, my almighty arms 



390 PASSAGES FROM "PARADISE LOST." 

Gird on, and sword upon thy puissant thigh; 

Pursue these suns of darkness, drive them out 
From all Heaven's hounds into the utter Deep: • 

* # * * -:•:• * 

he, o'er his sceptre bowing, rose 



From the right hand of glory where he sat; 
And the third sacred morn began to shine, 
Dawning through Heaven. Forth rusked with whirl- 
wind-sound 
The chariot of Paternal Deity, 

Flashing thick flames, wheel within wheel, undrawn, 
Itself instinct with Spirit, but convoyed 
By four cherubic shapes. Four faces each 
Had wondrous; as with stars their bodies all 
And wings were set with eyes, with eyes the wheels 
Of beryl, and careering fires between 
Over their heads a crystal firmament, 
Whereon a sapphire throne, inlaid with pure 
Amber and colours of the showery arch. 
He in celestial panoply all armed 
Of radiant Urim, work divinely wrought 
Ascended ; at his right hand Victory 
Sat eagle-winged; beside him hung his bow 
And quiver with three-bolted thunder stored ; 
And from about him fierce effusion rolled 
Of smoke and bickering flame, and sparkles dire. 
Attended with ten thousand thousand Saints, 
He onward came ; far off his coming shone ; 
And twenty thousand — I their number heard — 



PASSAGES FROM "PARADISE LOST." 391 

Chariots of God, half on each, hand, were seen. 
He on the wings of Cherub rode sublime, 
On the crystalline sky, in sapphire throned, 
Illustrious far and wide, but by his own 
First seen ; them unexpected joy surprised, 
When the great ensign of Messiah blazed, 
Aloft by Angels borne, his sign in Heaven ; 
Under whose (Jbnduct Michael soon reduced 
His army, circumfused on either wing, 
Under their Head embodied all in one. 
Before him Power divine his way prepared; 
At his command the uprooted hills retired, 
Each to his place ; they heard his voice, and went 
Obsequious ; Heaven his wonted face renewed, 
And with fresh flowerets hill and valley smiled. 
This saw his hapless foes, but stood obdured, 
And to rebellious fight rallied their Powers, 
Insensate, hope conceiving from despair ! 
In heavenly Spirits could such perverseness dwell ? 
But to convince the proud what signs avail, 
Or wonders move the obdurate to relent ? 
They, hardened more by what might most reclaim, 
Grieving to see his glory, at the sight 
Took envy ; and, aspiring to his highth, 
Stood re-imbattled fierce, by force or fraud 
Weening to prosper, and at length prevail 
Against God and Messiah, or to fall" 
In universal ruin last; and now 



392 PASSAGES FROM "PARADISE LOST." 

To final battle drew, disdaining flight, 
Or faint retreat * ** * 

# 4t * # # -:•:- ■* 

At once the Four spit ail out their starry wings, 
With dreadful shade contiguous, and the orbs 
Of his fierce chariot rolled, as with the sound 
Of torrent floods, or of a numerous host. 
He on his impious foes right onward drove, 
Gloomy as nighl ; under his burning wheels 
The steadfast Empyrean shook throughout* 
All but the throne itself of God. Full soon 
Among them he arrived, in Lis right-hand 
Grasping ten thousand thunders, which he sent 
Before him, such as in their souls infixed 
Plagues; they, astonished, all resistance lost, 
All courage ; down their idle weapons dropt ; 
O'er shields, and helms, and helmed heads he rode 
Of Thrones and mighty Seraphim prostrate, 
That wished the mountains now might be again 
Thrown on them, as a shelter from bis ire. 
Kor less on either side tempestuous fell 
His arrows, from the fourfold-visaged Four 
Distinct with eyes, and from the living wheels 
Distinct alike with multitude of eyes ; 
One spirit in them ruled, and every eye 
Glared lightning, and shot forth pernicious fire 
Among the accursed, that withered all their strength, 
And of their wonted vigour left them drained, 
Exhausted, spiritless, afflicted, fallen. 



PASSAGES FROM "PARADISE LOST." 393 

Yet half his strength he put not forth, but checked 

His thunder in mid volley ; for he meant 

Not to destroy, but root them out of Heaven. 

The overthrown he raised, and, as a herd 

Of goats or timorous flock, together thronged, 

Drove them before him thunder-struck, pursued 

With terrors and with furies, to the bounds 

And crystal wall of Heaven, which, opening wide, 

Eolled inward, and a spacious gap disclosed 

Into the wasteful Deep. The monstrous sight 

Struck them with horror backward, but far worse 

Urged them behind ; headlong themselves they threw 

Down from the verge of Heaven ; eternal wrath 

Burnt after them to the bottomless pit. 

Hell heard the unsufferable noise, Hell saw 
Heaven ruining from Heaven, and would have fled 
Affrighted; but strict Fate had cast too deep -~ 
Her dark foundations, and too fast had bound. 
Nine days they fell ; confounded Chaos roared, 
And felt tenfold confusion in their fall 
Through his wild anarchy, so huge a rout 
Encumbered him with ruin; Hell at -last 
Yawning received them whole, and on them closed ; 
Hell, their fit habitation, fraught with fire 
Unquenchable, the house of woe and pain. 
Disburdened Heaven rejoiced, and soon repaired 
Her mural breach, returning whence it rolled. 
Sole victor, from the expulsion of his foes, 
Messiah his triumphal chariot turned. 



394 PASSAGES FROM SUA KS PEA RE. 

To meet him all his Saints, wlio silent stood 
Eye-witnesses of Lis almighty acts, 
With jubilee advanced; and as they went, 
Shaded with branching palm, each Order bright, 
Sung triumph, and him sung victorious King, 
Son, Heir, and Lord, to him dominion given, 
"Worthiest to reign. He celebrated rode, 
Triumphant through mid Heaven, ;nto the courts 
And temple of his mighty Father throned 
On high ; who into glory him received, 
Where now lie sits, at the right-hand of bliss. 

Book VI. v. 710-799; 827-892. 



PASSAGES FROM SHAKSPEARE. 

SHY LOCK, THE JEW, LOANS B A S S A N I O 
THREE THOUSAND DUCATS ON THE SE- 
CURITY OF A POUND OF ANTONIO'S 
FLESH. 

[Bassanio, one of the suitors of Portia, a rich lady of Belmont, 
having "disabled his estate, by something showing a more 
swelling port than his faint means would grant continuance," 
applies to his friend Antonio, the Merchant of Venice, for a 
loan of money to enable him " to hold a rival place," with her 
more wealthy suitors. To his appeal, Antonio replies : 

Thou know'st that all my fortunes are at sea; 
Neither have I money, nor commodity 
To raise a present sum: therefore go forth, 



PASSAGES FRO M SHAKSPEARE. 395 

Try what my credit can in Venice do ; 
That shall "be racked, even to the uttermost, 
To furnish thee to Belmont, to fair Portia. 
Go, presently inquire, and so will I, 
Where money is ; and I no question make, 
To have it of my trust, or for my sake. 

Eassanio accordingly goes forth in search of a money-lender, 
and meets with Shylook, the Jew, whom he asks for a loan of 
three thousand ducats, on Antonio's security :] 

Shy. Three thousand ducats, — well. 

Bass. Ay, sir, for three months. 

Shy. For three months, — well. 

Bass. For the which, as I told you, Antonio shall 
be bound. 

Shy. Antonio shall become bound, — well. 

Bass. May you stead me ? Will you pleasure me ? 
Shall I know your answer ? 

Shy. Three thousand ducats, for three months, and 
Antonio bound. 

Bass. Your answer to that. 

Shy. Antonio is a good man. 

Bass. Have you heard any imputation to the con- 
trary ? 

Shy. Ho, no, no, no, no ; — my meaning, in saying 
he is a good man, is to have you understand me, that 
he is sufficient. Yet his means are in supposition : he 
hath an argosy bound to Tripolis, another to the 
Indies; I understand, moreover, upon the Eialto, he 
hath a third at Mexico, a fourth for England, — and 
other ventures he hath, squandered abroad. But ships 



396 PASS AG ES FR <> M 8 11 . I K 8 V E - 1 R B . 

are but boards, sailors but men; there be land-rats, 

and water-rate, water-thieves, and land-thieves ; I mean 

pirates; and then, there is the peril of v rinds 

and rocks. The man is, notwithstanding, si] 

— three thousand ducats; — I think I may take his 

bond. 

Hired yon i 

//. I will be assured, T may; and, thai I may he 

assured, I will bethink me. May 1 speak with An- 
tonio ? 

Bass. If it please you t with us. 

Shy. Yes, to smell pork; to eat of the habitation 
which your prophet, the Nazarite, conjured the devil 
into. I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with 
you, walk with you, and so following ; but I will not 
eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with you. — 
What news on the Eialto? — AVho is he comes here? 
Enter Antonio. 

Bass. This is signior Antonio. 

Shy. [Aside.~] How like a fawning publican he 
looks ! 
I hate him for he is a Christian. 
But more, for that, in low simplicity, 
He lends out money gratis, and brings down 
The rate of usance here with us in Venice. 
If I can catch him once upon the hip, 
I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him. 
He hates our sacred nation ; and he rails, 
Even there where merchants most do congregate, 



PASSAGES FROM SHAKSPEARE. 397 

On me, my bargains, and my well- won thrift, 
Which he calls interest. Cursed be my tribe, 
If I forgive him ! 

Bass. Shylock, do you hear? 

Shy. I am debating of my present store ; 
And, by the near guess of my memory, 
I cannot instantly raise up the gross 
Of full three thousand ducats. What of that ? 
Tubal, a wealthy Hebrew of my tribe, 
Will furnish me. But soft ; how many months 
Do you desire ? — Eest you fair, good signior ; [To 

Antonio.] 
Your worship was the last man in our mouths. 

Ant. Shylock, although I neither lend nor borrow, 
By taking nor by giving of excess, 
Yet, to supply the ripe wants of my friend, 
I'll break a custom. — Is he yet possessed, 
How much you would ? [To Bassanto.] 

Shy. Ay, ay, three thousand ducats. 

Ant. And for three months. 

Shy. I had forgot, — three months, you told me so. 
Well then, your bond ; and, let me see ; — but hear 

you; 
Methought you said, you neither lend, nor borrow, 
Upon advantage* 

Ant. I do never use it. 

Shy. When Jacob grazed his uncle Laban's sheep, 
This Jacob from our holy Abraham was 
34 



398 PASSAGES FROM SIIAKSPEARE. 

(As his wise mother wrought in his behalf,) 
The third possessor; ay, he was the third — 

Ant. And what of him ? did lie take interest ? 

Shy. No, not take interest ; not, as you would say, 
Directly interest ; mark what Jacob did. 
When Laban and himself were compromised, 
That all the canlings which were streaked, and pied, 
Should fall as Jacob's hire, 
The skilful shepherd peeled me certain wands, 
And stuck them up before the fulsome ewes, 
Who, then conceiving, did in eaning time 
Fall parti-colour'd lambs, and those were Jacob's. 
This was a way to thrive, and he was blest ; 
And thrift is blessing, if men steal it not. 

Ant. This was a venture, sir, that Jacob served for ; 
A thing not in his power to bring to pass, 
But swayed and fashioned by the hand of Heaven. 
Was this inserted to make interest good? 
Or is your gold and silver, ewes and rams? 

Shy. I cannot tell ; I make it breed as fast : — 
But note me, signior. 

Ant. Mark you this, Bassanio, 
The devil can cite scripture for his purpose. 
An evil soul, producing holy witness, 
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek ; 
A goodly apple rotten at the heart ; 
0, what a goodly outside falsehood hath ! 

Shy. Three thousand ducats, — 'tis a good round sum. 
Three months from twelve ; then, let me see ; the rate — 



PASSAGES FROM SHAKSPEARE. 399 

Ant. Wei], Shylock, stall we be beholding to you? 

Shy. Signior Antonio, many a time and oft, 
In the Eialto, you have rated me 
About my moneys, and my usances: 
Still have I borne it with a patient shrug; 
For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe. 
You call me — misbeliever, cut-throat dog, 
And spit upon my Jewish gaberdine, 
And all for use of that which is mine own. 
Well then, it now appears, you need my help : 
Go to, then ; you come to me, and you say, 
Shylock, we would have moneys ; you say so ; 
You, that did void your rheum upon my beard, 
And foot me, as you spurn a stranger cur 
Over your threshold ; moneys is your suit. 
What should I say -to you ? Should I not say, 
Hath a dog money? Is it possible 
A cur can lend three thousand ducats? or 
Shall I bend low, and, in a bondman's key, 
With bated breath, and whispering humbleness, 
Say this, — 

Fair sir, you spit on me on Wednesday last ; 
You spurned me such a day; another time 
You called me — dog; and for these courtesies 
I'll lend you thus much moneys. 

Ant. I am as like to call thee so again, 
To spit on thee again, to spurn thee, too. 
If thou wilt lend this money, lend it not 
As to thy friends ; (for when did friendship take 



400 rASSAGES FROM SIIAKSPEARE. 

A breed for barren metal of his friend ?) 
But lend it rather to thine enemy ; 
Who, if he break, thou mayst with better face 
Exact the penalty. 

Shy. Why, look you, how you storm! 
I would be friends with you, and have your love, 
Forget the shames that you have stained me with, 
Supply your present wants, and take no doit 
Of usance for my moneys, and you'll not hear me: 
This is kind I offer. 

Ant. This were kindness. 

Shy, This kindness will I show : — 
Go with me to a notary; seal me there 
Your single bond; and, in a merry sport, 
If you repay me not on such a day, 
In such a place, such sum, or sums, as are 
Expressed in the condition, let the forfeit 
Be nominated for an equal pound 
Of your fair flesh, to be cut off and taken 
In what part of your body pleaseth me. 

Ant. Content, in faith : I'll seal to such a bond, 
And say there is much kindness in the Jew. 

Bass. You shall not seal to such a bond for me : 
I'll rather dwell in my necessity. 

Ant. Why, fear not, man ; I will not forfeit it : 
Within these two months, that's a month before 
This bond expires, I do expect return 
Of thrice three times the value of this bond. 

Shy. father Abraham, what these Christians are 



PASSAGES FROM SHAK S P EARE . 401 

Whose own hard dealings teaches them snspect 

The thoughts of others ! — ■ Pray you, tell me this : 

If he should break his day, what should I gain 

By the exaction of the forfeiture? 

A pound of man's flesh, taken from a man, 

Is not so estimable, profitable neither, 

As flesh of muttons, beefs, or goats. I say, 

To buy his favour, I extend this friendship ; 

If he will take it, so ; if not, adieu ; 

And, for my love, I pray you wrong me not. 

Ant. Yes, Shylock, I will seal unto this bond. 

Shy. Then meet me forthwith at the notary's ; 
Give him direction for this merry bond; 
And I will go and purse the ducats straight ; 
See to my house, left in the fearful guard 
Of an unthrifty knave ; and presently 
I will be with you. [Exit. 

Ant. Hie thee, gentle Jew. 
This Hebrew will turn Christian : he grows kind. 

Bass. I like not fair terms and a villain's mind. 

Ant. Come on ; in this there can be no dismay : 
My ships come home a month before the day. 

[Exeunt. 
Merchant of Venice, Act 1. Scene 3. 



34* 



402 PASSAGES FROM SIIAKSPEARE. 



OTHELLO, THE MOOR, ACCUSED BY BRA- 
BANTIO, OF HAVING WON HIS DAUGH- 
TER, DESDEMONA, BY LOVE-POTIONS AND 
WITCHCRAFT, MAKES HIS DEFENCE BE- 
FORE THE DUKE AND SENATORS OF VE- 
NICE, AND TELLS THE STORY OF HIS 
COURTSHIP. 

Othdl>. Moat potent, grave, and reverend signiors, 
My very noble and approv'd good masters, 
That I have taVn away this old man's daughter, 
It is most true ; true, I have married her : 
The very head and front of my offending 
Hath this extent, no more. Rude am I in my speech 
And little bless'd with the set phrase of peace ; 
For since these arms of mine had seven years' pith, 
Till now, some nine moons wasted, they have us'd 
Their dearest action in the tented field; 
And little of this great world can I speak 
More than pertains to feats of broil and battle ; 
And, therefore, little shall I grace my cause, 
In speaking for myself. Yet, by your gracious pa- 
tience, 
I will a round unvarnish'd tale deliver 
Of my whole course of love ; what drugs, what charms, 
"What conjuration, and what mighty magic, 
(For such proceeding I am charg'd withal) 
I won his daughter. 



PASSAGES FROM SHAKSPEARE. 403 

Brahantio. A maiden never bold; 

Of spirit so still and quiet, that her motion 
Blush'd at herself; and she, — in spite of nature, 
Of years, of country, credit, every thing, — 
To fall in love with what she fear'd to look on ! 
It is a judgment maim'd, and most imperfect, 
That will confess, perfection so could err 
Against all rules of nature ; and must be driven 
To find out practices of cunning hell, 
Why this should be. I, therefore, vouch again, 
That with some mixtures powerful o'er the blood, 
Or with some dram conjur'd to this effect, 
He wrought upon her. 

Duke. To vouch this is no proof: 

Without more wider and more overt test, 
These are thin habits, and poor likelihoods 
Of modern seeming, you prefer against him. 

1st Senator. But, Othello, speak : 

Bid you by indirect and forced courses 
Subdue and poison this young maid's affections ? 
Or came it by request, and such fair question 
As soul to soul affordeth? 

Othello. I do beseech you, 

Send for the lady to the Sagittary, 
And let her speak of me before her father: 
If you do find me foul in her report, 
The trust, the office, I do hold of you, 
Not only take away, but let your sentence 
Even fall upon my life. 



404 rASSAOES FROM SJIAKsn: IBB. 

Duke. Fetch Desdemona hither. 

Othdh. Ancient, conduct them; you best know the 
place. — [Exeunt [ago and Attendants. 

And, till she come, as truly as to heaven 
I do confess the vices of my blood, 
So justly to your grave ears I'll present 
Bow I did thrive in this liair lady's love, 
And she in mine. 

Duke. it, Othello. 

Othello. Her father Lov'd me; ofl invited me; 
Still questional me the story of my live, 
From year bo year ; the battles, sieges, fortunes, 
That I have pass'd. 

I ran it through, even from my boyish days, 
To the very moment that lie bade me tell it: 
rein I spake of most disastrous chances, 
Loving accidents by flood and field ; 
Of hair-breadth scapes in the imminent-deadly breach ; 
Of being taken by the insolent foe, 
And sold to slavery; of my redemption thence, 
And portance in my traveller's history; 
Wherein of antres vast, and deserts idle, 
Hough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch 

heaven, 
It was my hint to speak — such was the process — 
And of the Cannibals that each other eat, 
The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads 
Do grow beneath their shoulders. This to hear, 
Would Desdemona seriously incline: 



PASSAGES FROM SHAKSPEARE. 405 

But still the house affairs would draw her thence, 
Which ever as she could with haste despatch, 
She'd come again, and with a greedy ear 
Devour up my discourse. Which I observing, 
Took once a pliant hour ; and found good means 
To draw from her a prayer of earnest heart, 
That I would all my pilgrimage dilate, 
Whereof by parcels she had something heard, • 
But not intentively: I did consent; 
And often did beguile her of her tears, 
When. I did speak of some distressful stroke, 
That my youth suffer'd. My story being done, 
She gave me for my pains a world of sighs : 
She swore, — in faith, 'twas strange, 'twas passing 

strange ; 
'Twas pitiful, 'twas- wondrous pitiful : 
She wish'd she had not heard it ; yet she wish'd 
That heaven had made her such a man : she thank'd 

me; 
And bade me, if I had a friend that lov'd her, 
I should but teach him how to tell my story, 
And that would woo her. Upon this hint I spake ; 
She lov'd me for the dangers I had pass'd, 
And I lov'd her, that she did pity them. 
This only is the witchcraft I have used ; 
Here comes the lady; let her witness it. 



40G PASS ACES FROM SIIAKSPEARE. 

Enter Desdemonw, Iagq, and Attendant*. 

Duke. I think, this tale would win my daughter too. 
Good Brabantio, 
Take dp this mangled matter at the best: 

Men do their broken weapons rather at 
Than their bare hands. 

Brabantio. I pray you, hear her speak: 

If she confess that she was half the wooer. 
Destruction on my head, if my bad blame 
Light on the man. — Come hither, gentle mistress: 
Do you perceive in all this noble company, 
"Where most you owe obedience ? 

Desdemona. My noble father, 

I do perceive here a divided duty. 
To you, I am bound for life and education : 
My life and education, both do learn me 
How to respect you ; you are the lord of duty ; 
I am hitherto your daughter ; but here's my husband ; 
And so much duty as my mother show'd 
To you, preferring you before her father, 
So much I challenge that I may profess 
Due to the Moor, my lord. 

Brabantio. God be with you ! — I have done. — 

Please it your grace, on to the state affairs : 
I had rather to adopt a child than get it. — 
Come hither, Moor: 

I here do give thee that with all my heart, 
Which, but thou hast already, with all my heart 



PASSAGES FROM SHAKSPEARE. 40T 

I would keep from thee. — For your sake, jewel, 
I am glad at soul I nave no other child, 
For thy escape would teach me tyranny, 
To hang clogs on them. — I have done, my lord. 

Duke. Let me speak like yourself; and lay a sen- 
tence, 
Which, as a grise, or step, may help these lovers 
Into your favour. 

When remedies are past, the griefs are ended 
By seeing the worst, which late on hopes depended. 
To mourn a mischief that is past and gone 
Is the next way to draw new mischief on. 
What cannot he preserv'd when fortune takes, 
Patience her injury a mockery makes. 
The robb'd that smiles, steals something from the 

thief: 
He robs himself, that spends a bootless grief. 

Brabantio. So let the Turk of Cyprus us beguile : 
We lose it not, so long as we can smile. 
He bears the sentence well, that nothing bears 
But the free comfort which from thence he hears ; 
But he bears both the sentence and the sorrow, 
That, to pay grief, must of poor patience borrow. 
These sentences, to sugar, or to gall, 
Being strong on both sides, are equivocal: 
But words are words ; I never yet did hear, 
That the bruis'd heart was pierced through the ear. 
I humbly beseech you, proceed to the affairs of state. 

Duke. The Turk with a most mighty preparation 



408 PASSAGES FROM S II AKSPE ARE. 

makes for Cyprus.— Othello, the fortitude of the place 
is best known to you; and though we have there a 
substitute of most allowed sufficiency, yet opinion, a 
sovereign mistress of effects, throws a more safer voice 
on you : you must, therefore, be content to slubber the 
gloss of your new fortunes with this more stubborn 
and boisterous expedition. 

Otltello. The tyrant custom, most grave senators, 
Hath made the flinty and steel couch of war 
My thrice-driven bed of down : I do agnize 
A natural and prompt alacrity, 
I find in hardness; and do undertake 
These present wars against the Ottomites. 
Most humbly, therefore, bending to your state, 
I crave fit disposition for my wife ; 
Due reference of place, and exhibition ; 
With such accommodation, and besort, 
As levels with her breeding. 

Duke. Why; at her father's. 

Brdbantio. I'll not have it so. 

Oihelh. Nor I. 

Desdemona. Nor I ; I would not there reside 
To put my father in impatient thoughts, 
By being in his eye. Most gracious duke, 
To my unfolding lend your prosperous ear, 
And let me find a charter in your voice, 
To assist my simpleness. 

Duke. What would you, Desdemona? 






PASSAGES FRO 31 SHAKSPEARE. 409 

Desdemona. That I did love the Moor to live with 
him, 
My downright violence and storm of fortunes 
May trumpet to the world ; my heart's subdued 
Even to the very quality of my lord: 
I saw Othello's visage in his mind; 
And to his honours, and his valiant parts, 
Did I my soul and fortunes consecrate. 
So that, dear lords, if I be left behind, 
A moth of peace, and he go to the war, 
The rites for why I love him are bereft me, 
And I a heavy interim shall support 
By his dear absence. Let me go with him. 

Othello. Your voices, lords: 'beseech you, let her 
will 
Have a free way. 

Youch with me, heaven, I therefore beg it not, 
To please the palate of my appetite ; 
Nor to comply with heat, the young affects, 
In my defunct and proper satisfaction; 
But to be free and bounteous to her mind : 
And heaven defend your good souls, that you think 
I will your serious and great business scant, 
For she is with me. No, when light- wing'd toys 
Of feather'd Cupid seel with wanton dulness, 
My speculative and omc'd instrument, 
That my disports corrupt and taint my business, 
| Let housewives make a skillet of my helmet, 

35 



410 PASSAGES FROM S11AKSPEARE. 

And all indign and base adversities 
Make head against my estimation. 

Duke. Be it as you shall privately determine, 
Either for her stay, or going. The affair cries haste, 
And speed must answer it. 

1st Senator. You must away to-night. 

Othello. With all my heart. 

Duke. At nine in the morning here we'll meet again. 
Othello, leave some officer behind, 
And he shall our commission bring to you ; 
With such things else of quality and respect, 
As doth import you. 

Othello. Please your grace, my ancient ; 

A man he is of honesty, and trust : 
To his conveyance I assign my wife, 
With what else needful your good grace shall think 
To be sent after me. 

Duke. Let it be so. — 

Good night to every one. — And, noble signior, [To 

Brabantio] 
If virtue no delighted beauty lack, 
Your son-in-law is far more fair than black. 

1st Senator. Adieu, brave Moor! use Desdemona 
well. 

Brabantio. Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to 
see: 
She has deceiv'd her father, and may thee. 

Othello, the Moor of Venice, Act. I. Scene 3. 



PASSAGES FROM SHAKSPEARE. 411 



RATIO IMPARTS TO HIM THE APPEAR' 



Elsinorb. A Room of State. Enter the King, Queen, Hamlet, Polo- 
nius, Laertes, Voltimand, Cornelius, Lords, and attendants. 

King. Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's 
death. 
The memory be green, and that it us befitted 
To bear our hearts in grief, and our whole kingdom 
To be contracted in one brow of woe ; 
Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature, 
That we with wisest sorrow think on him, 
Together with remembrance of ourselves. 
Therefore, our sometime sister, now our queen, 
The imperial jointress of this warlike state, 
Have we, as 'twere, with a defeated joy, — 
With one auspicious, and one dropping eye, 
"With mirth in funeral, and with dirge in marriage, 
In equal scale weighing delight and dole, — 
Taken to wife : nor have we herein barr'd 
Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone 
With this affair along : For all, our thanks. 

Now follows, that you know, young Fortinbras, 
Holding a weak supposal of our worth, 
Or thinking, by our late dear brother's death 
Our state to be disjoint and out of frame, 
Colleagued with the dream of his advantage, 



412 PASSAGES FROM SHAKSPEARE. 

He hath not fail'd to pester us with message, 
Importing the surrender of those lands 
Lost by his father, with all bands of law, 
To our most valiant brother. So much for him. 
Now for ourself, and for this time of meeting. 
Thus much the business is : We have here writ 
To Norway, uncle of young Fortinbras, — 
Who, impotent and bed-rid, scarcely hears 
Of this his nephew's purpose, — to suppress 
His further gait herein, in that the levies, 
The lists, and full proportions, are all made 
Out of his subject : and we here despatch 
You, good Cornelius, and you, Yoltimand, 
For bearers of this greeting to old Norway ; 
Giving to you no further personal power 
To business with the king, more than the scope 
Of these dilated articles allow. 
Farewell ; and let your haste commend your duty. 
Cor. Vol. In that, and all things, will we show our 

duty. 
King. We doubt it nothing : heartily farewell. 

[Exeunt Yoltimand and Cornelius. 
And now, Laertes, what's the news with you ? 
You told us of some suit ; What is't, Laertes ? 
You cannot speak of reason to the Dane, 
And lose your voice: What wouldst thou beg, 

Laertes, 
That shall not be my offer, not thy asking ? 
The head is not more native to the heart, 



PASSAGES FROM SHAKSPEARE. 413 

The hand more instrumental to the month, 
Than is the throne of Denmark to thy father. 
"What wouldst thon have, Laertes? 

Laer. Dread my lord, 
Yonr leave and favour to return to France ; 
From whence though willingly I came to Denmark, 
To show my duty in your coronation ; 
Yet now, I must confess, that duty done, 
My thoughts and wishes bend again toward France, 
And bow them to your gracious leave and pardon. 

King. Have you your father's leave ? "What says 
Polonius ? 

Pol. He hath, my lord, wrung from me my slow 
leave, 
By laboursome petition; and, at last, 
Upon his will I seal'cl my hard consent: 
I do beseech you, give him leave to go. 

King. Take thy fair hour, Laertes; time be thine, 
And thy best graces : spend it at thy will. — 
But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son, 

Ham. A little more than kin, and less than kind. 

[Aside. 

King. How is it that the clouds still hang on you ? 

Ham. Not so, my lord ; I am too much i'the sun. 

Queen, (rood Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour oft] 
And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark. 
Do not, for ever, with thy veiled lids 
Seek for thy noble father in the dust: 
35* 



414 rASSAGES FROM 8SAESPBAMM. 

Thou know'st, 'tis common ; all that lives must die, 
Passing through nature to eternity. 

Ham. Ay, madam, it is common. 

Queen. If it be, 
Why seems it so particular with thee? 

Ham. Seems, madam! nay, it is; I know not seems. 
'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother, 
Nor customary suits of solemn black, 
Nor windy suspiration of forc'd breath, 
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye, 
Nor the dejected haviour of the visage, 
Together with all forms, moods, shows of grief, 
That can denote me truly ; These, indeed, seem, 
For they are actions that a man might play ; 
But I have that within, which passeth show ; 
These but the trappings and the suits of woe. 

King. 'Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, 
Hamlet, 
To give these mourning duties to your father : 
But, you must know, your father lost a father ; 
That father lost lost his ; and the survivor bound 
In filial obligation, for some term, 
To do obsequious sorrow : But to perse ver 
In obstinate condolement, is a course 
Of impious stubbornness; 'tis unmanly grief : 
It shows a will most incorrect to heaven ; 
A heart unfortified, a mind impatient ; 
An understanding simple and unschool'd: 
For what, we know, must be, and is as common 



PASSAGES FROM SHAKSPEARE. 415 

As any the most vulgar thing to sense, 
Why should we, in our peevish opposition, 
Take it to heart ? Fie ! 'tis a fault to heaven, 
A fault against the dead, a fault to nature, 
To reason most absurd ; whose common theme 
Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried, 
From the first corse till he that died to-day, 
This must be so. We pray you throw to earth 
This unprevailing woe, and think of us 
As of a father : for let the world take note, 
You are the most immediate to our throne; 
And, with no less nobility of love 
Than that which dearest father bears his son, 
Do I impart toward you. For your intent 
In going back to school in Wittenberg, 
It is most retrograde to our desire: 
And, we beseech you, bend you to remain 
Here, in the cheer and comfort of our eye, 
Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son. 

Queen. Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet : 
I pray thee, stay with us ; go not to Wittenberg. 

Ham. I shall in all my best obey you, madam. 

King. Why, 'tis a loving and a fair reply: 
Be as ourself in Denmark. — Madam, come ; 
This gentle and unforc'd accord of Hamlet 
Sits smiling to my heart ; in grace whereof, 
No jocund health that Denmark drinks to-day, 
But the great cannon to the clouds shall tell; 



41C PASSAGES FROM > fi A K SPEA RE. 

And the king's rouse the heaven shall bruit again, 
Re-speaking earthly thunder. Come awi 

Flourish. Exeunt Kim;. Ql BEN, L ; , &C., PoLONltf8 
and L 

Ham. 0, that tli is too — too solid flesh would melt, 
Thaw, and resolve Itself into a i 
Or that tli»' Everlasting had not fix'd 

inst self-slaughter ! God! Q-odl 
Sow weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable 
Seem to me all the oses of this world! 
Fie on't! fie ! 'tis an anweeded garden, 

That grows to b 1 ; things rank, and gross in nature, 

PQSsess it merely. That it should come to this ! 
But two months dead! — nay, not so much, not two: 
So excellent a king; that was, to this, 
Hyperion to a satyr: so loving to my mother, 
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven 
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth ! 
Must I remember? why, she would hang on him, 
As if increase of appetite had grown 
By what it fed on : And yet, within a montn, — 
Let me not think on't ; — Frailty, thy name is woman ! 
A little month ; or ere those shoes were old, 
With which she follow'd my poor father's body, 
Like Niobe, all tears ; — why she, even she, — 
God! a beast that wants discourse of reason, 
Would have mourn'd longer, — married with my uncle, 
My father's brother ; but no more like my father, 
Than I to Hercules : Within a month ; 



PASSAGES FROM SHAKSPEARE. 417 

Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears 
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes, 
She married. 

It is not, nor it cannot come to, good ; 
But break, my heart ; for I must hold my tongue ! 
Enter Horatio, Bernardo, and Marcellus. 

Hor. Hail to your lordship ! 

Ham. I am glad to see you well : 
Horatio, — or I do forget myself. 

Hor. The same, my lord, and your poor servant ever. 

Ham. Sir, my good friend ; I'll change that name 
with you. 
And what make you from Wittenberg, Horatio ? — 
Marcellus ? 

Mar. My good lord, — 

Ham. I am very glad to see you ; good even, Sir. — 
But what, in faith, make you from Wittenberg ? 

Hor. A truant disposition, good my lord. 

Ham. I would not hear your enemy say so ; 
Nor shall you do mine ear that violence, 
To make it truster of your own report 
Against yourself: I know, you are no truant. 
But what is your affair in Elsinore ? 
We'll teach you to drink deep, ere you depart. 

Hor. My lord, I came to see your father's funeral. 

Ham. I pray thee, do not mock me, fellow- student ; 
I think, it was to see my mother's wedding. 

Hor. Indeed, my lord, it follow'd hard upon. 



418 PASSAGES FROM 8HAKSPEARE, 

Ham. Thrift, thrift, Horatio! the funeral bak'd 
meate 
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables. 
'Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven 
Or ever I had seen that day, Horatio! — 
My father, — methinks, I see my father. 

Hor, () ! where, my lord? 

Ham. In my mind's eye, Horatio 

Hor. I saw him once ; he was a goodly king. 

Ham, He was a man, take him for all in all, 
I shall not look upon his like again. 

Hor. My lord, I think I saw him yesternight. 

Ham. Saw who ? 

Hor, My Lord, the king your father. 

Ham, The king my father ! 

Jlor. Season your admiration for awhile 
"With an attent ear, till I may deliver, 
Upon the witness of these gentlemen, 
This marvel to you. 

Ham. For God's love, let me hear. 

Hor. Two nights together, had these gentlemen, 
Marcellus and Bernardo, on their watch, 
In the dead vast and middle of the night, 
Been thus encountered. A figure like your father, 
Armed at point, exactly, cap-a-pe', 
Appears before them, and with solemn march, 
Goes slow and stately by them ; thrice he walk'd, 
By their oppress'd and fear-surprised eyes, 
Within his truncheon's length ; whilst they, distill'd 



PASSAGES FRO 31 SHAKSPEARE. 419 

Almost to jelly with the act of fear, 

Stand dumb ; and speak not to him. This to me 

In dreadful secrecy impart they did, 

And I with them the third night kept the watch : 

Where, as they had deliver'd, both in time, 

Form of the thing, each word made true and good, 

The apparition comes. I knew your father ; 

These hands are not more like. 

Ham. But where was this ? 

Hor. My lord, upon the platform where we watch'd. 

Ham. Did you not speak to it? 

Hor. My lord, I did ; 
But answer made it none : yet once, methought, 
It lifted up its head, and did address 
Itself to motion, like as it would speak : 
But, even then, the morning cock crew loud, 
And at the sound it shrunk in haste away, 
And vanish'd from our sight. 

Ham. 'Tis very strange. 

Hor. As I do live, my honour'd lord, 'tis true ; 
And we did think it writ down in our duty, 
To let you know of it. 

Ham. Indeed, indeed, Sirs, but this troubles me. 
Hold you the watch to-night ? 

All. We do, my lord. 

Ham. Arm'd, say you ? 

All. Arm'd, my lord. 

Ham. From top to toe? 

All. My lord, from head to foot. 



420 PASSAGES FROM SIIAKSPEARE. 

Ham. Then saw you not 
His face? 

Hor. 0, yes, my lord : lie wore his bearer up. 

Ham. What, look'd he frowBingly? 

Hor. A countenance more 
In sorrow than in anger. 

Ham. Pale, or red ? 

Hor. Nay, very pale. 

Ham. And iixYl his eyes upon you? 

Hor. Most constantly. 

Ham. I would I had been there. 

Hor. It would have much amaz'd you. 

Ham. Very like, 
Very like. Stay'd it long ? 

Hor. While one with moderate haste might tell a 
hundred. 

Mar. Ber. Longer, longer. 

Hor. Not when I saw it. 

Ham. His beard was grizzl'd ? no ? 

Hor. It was, as I have seen it in his life, 
A sable silver'd. 

Ham. I will watch to-night: 
Perchance, 'twill walk again. 

Hor. I warrant it will. 

Ham. If it assume my noble father's person, 
I'll speak to it, though hell itself should gape, 
And bid me hold my peace. I prayyou all, 
If you have hitherto conceal'd this sight, 
Let it be tenable in your silence still; 



PASSAGES FROM SHAKSPEARE. 421 

And whatsoever else shall hap to-night, 
Give it an understanding, but no tongue : 
I will requite yonr loves. So, fare yon well : 
Upon the platform, 'twixt eleven and twelve, 
I'll visit yon. 

All. Our duty to your honour. 

Ham. Your loves, as mine to you : Farewell. 

[Exeunt Horatio, Marcellus, and Bernardo.] 
My father's spirit in arms ! all is not well ; 
I doubt some foul play ; would the night were come ; 
Till then sit still, my soul. Foul deeds will rise, 
Though all the earth o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes. 

Exit. 
Samlet, Act L, Scene 2. 

INTERVIEW BETWEEN MACBETH AND 
LADY MACBETH AFTER THE MUR- 
DER OF KING DUNCAN. 

Mach. I have done the deed ! — didst thou not hear 

a noise? 
Lady M. I heard the owl scream, and the crickets 

cry. 
Mach. Did not you speak? 
Lady M. When? Now? 

Mach. As I descended. 

Lady M. Ay. 
Mach. Hark ! — 
Who lies i' the second chamber ? 

36 



422 J' ASS AGES FROM S II A KS PEA RE. 

Lady M. Donalbain. 

Macb. This is a sorry sight. [Looking on his hands. 

Lady M. A foolish thought, to say a sorry sight. 

Macb. There's one did laugh in his sleep, 
And one cried, " Murther I" that they did wake each 

other ; 
I stood and heard them : but they did say their 

prayers, 
And address'd them again to sleep. 

Lady M. There are two lodg'd together. 

Macb. One cried, " God bless us 1" and " Amen !" the 
other; 
As they had seen me, with these hangman's hands. 
Listening their fear, I could not say, amen, 
When they did say, God bless us. 

Lady M. Consider it not so deeply. 

Macb. But wherefore could not I pronounce, amen ? 
I had most need of blessing, and amen 
Stuck in my throat. 

Lady M. These deeds must not be thought 
After these ways ; so, it will make us mad. 

Macb. Methought I heard a voice cry, "Sleep no 
more! 
Macbeth does murther sleep" — the innocent sleep, 
Sleep, that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care, 
The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath, 
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, 
Chief nourisher in life's feast, — 

Lady M. What do you mean ? 



PASSAGES FROM SHAKSPEARE. 423 

Macb. Still it cried, "Sleep no more!" to all the 
house : 
" Glamis hath murther'd sleep :" and therefore Cawdor 
Shall sleep no more, Macbeth shall sleep no more I 

Lady M. Who was it that thus cried? Why, 
worthy thane, 
You do unbend your noble strength, to think 
So brainsickly of things. — Go, get some water, 
And wash this filthy witness from your hand. — 
"Why did you bring these daggers from the place ? 
They must lie there : Go, carry them, and smear 
The sleepy grooms with blood. 

Macb. I'll go no more: 

I am afraid to think what I have done; 
Look on't again I dare not. 

Lady M. Infirm of purpose ! 

Give me the daggers : The sleeping, and the dead, 
Are but as pictures : 'tis the eye of childhood 
That fears a painted devil. If he do bleed. 
I'll gild the faces of the grooms withal, 
For it must seem their guilt. 

[Exit. Knocking within. 

Macb. Whence is that knocking ? 

How is't with me, when every noise appals me ? 
What hands are here ? Ha ! they pluck out mine eyes ! 
Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood 
Clean from my hands ? No ; this my hand will rather 
The multitudinous seas incarnardine, 
Making the green — one red. 



424 PASSAGES FROM SHAKSPEARE. 

Re-enter Lady Macbeth. 
Lady M. My hands are of your colour; but I shame 
To Avear a heart so white. [Knocking.'] I hear 

knocking 
At the south entry : — retire we to our chamber : 
A little water clears us of this deed : 
How easy is it ; then! Your constancy 
Hath left you unattended. [Knocking.] Ilark ! more 

knocking : 
Get on your nightgown, lest occasion call us, 
And show us to be watchers: — Be not lost 
So poorly in your thoughts. 

Macb. To know my deed, 'twere best not know 
myself. [Knocking. 

Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I would thou 
couldst ! 

Macbeth, Act II., Scene 2. 

ULYSSES' ADVICE TO ACHILLES. 

[Achilles, by reason of a quarrel with the Grecian general, 
Agamemnon, having withdrawn from action in the field, Ulysses 
instructs the latter and his brother commanders to pass him by 
with a " negligent and loose regard/' to afford himself an op- 
portunity, if Achilles remark upon their treatment of him, to 
give him some wholesome advice in regard to his past conduct, 
and to stir him up into a rivalry with Ajax. The ingenious 
delicacy with which Ulysses manages the haughty and self-willed 
Achilles, to gain his point, the keen insight into human nature 
which he exhibits in the matter, and the profound wisdom to 
which he gives expression in the course of his advice, when the 



PASSAGES FROM SHAKSPEARE. 425 

opportunity presents itself, render this scene as characteristically 
Shakspearian as any other of the same extent in the whole range 
of the great poet's Plays.} 

Scene, The Grecian Camp. Enter Agamemnon, Ulysses, Nestor, Ajax, 
and Menelatts. Achilles and Patrocltjs appear at a distance before 
their tent. 

Ulyss. Achilles stands i'the entrance of his tent : — 
Please it our general to pass strangely by him, 
As if he were forgot ; and, princes all, 
Lay negligent and loose regard upon him ; 
I will come last. 'Tis like, he'll question me, 
Why such unplausive eyes are bent, why turn'd 

him: 
If so, I have derision med'cinable, 
To use between your strangeness and his pride, 
AYhich his own will shall have desire to drink ; 
It may do good: pride hath no other glass 
To show itself, but pride ; for supple knees 
Feed arrogance, and are the proud man's fees. 

Again. We'll execute your purpose, and put on 
A form of strangeness as we pass along ; 
So do each lord ; and either greet him not, 
Or else disdainfully, which shall shake him more 
Than if not look'd on. I will lead the way. 

Achil. What, comes the general to speak with me ? 
You know my mind, I'll fight no more 'gainst Troy. 

Agam. What says Achilles? would he aught with 
us ? 

Nest. Would you, my lord, aught with the general ? 

Achil. No. 

36* 



420 7M SSA GFS FR M SUA K8PSJ i 

Nest. Nothing, my lord. 

Agam. The better. 

[Exeunt AGAMEMNON and NESTOR. 

Achil. Good day, good day. 

Men. How do you ? how do you ? 

[ Exit Mkxelaus. 

Achil. What, does the cuckold scorn me? 

Ajar. How now. Patroclus? 

Achil. Good morrow, Ajax. 

Ajax, 11a? 

Achil. Good morrow. 

Ajax. Ay, and good next day too. 

[Exit Ajax. 

Achil. What mean these fellows ? Know they not 
Achilles ? 

Pa/?-. They pass by strangely: they were us'd to 
bend, 
To send their smiles before them to Achilles ; 
To come as humbly, as they us'd to creep 
To holy altars. 

Achil. What, am I poor of late? 
'Tis certain, greatness, once fallen out with fortune, 
Must fall out with men too. What the declin'd is, 
He shall as soon read in the eyes of others, 
As feel in his own fall : for men, like butterflies, 
Show not their mealy wings, but to the summer ; 
And not a man, for being simply man, 
Hath any honour ; but honour for those honours 
That are without him, as place, riches, favour, 



PASSAGES FROM SHAKSPEARE. 421 

Prizes of accident as oft as merit: 

Which when they fall, as being slippery standers, 

The love that lean'd on them as slippery too, 

Do one pluck down another, and together 

Die in the fall. But 'tis not so with me: 

Fortune and I are friends; I do enjoy 

At ample point all that I did possess, 

Save these men's looks ; who do, methinks, find ou> 

Something not worth in me such rich beholding 

As they have often given. Here is Ulysses; 

I'll interrupt his reading. — 

How now, Ulysses? 

Ulyss. Now, great Thetis' son? 

Acliil. What are you reading? 

Ulyss. A strange fellow here 
Writes me, That man — how dearly ever parted, 
How much in having, or without, or in, — 
Cannot make boast to have that which he hath, 
Nor feels not what he owes, but by reflection ; 
As when his virtues shining upon others 
Heat them, and they retort that heat again 
To the first giver. 

Achil. This is not strange, Ulysses. 
The beauty that is borne here in the face 
The bearer knows not, but commends itself 
To others' eyes: nor doth the eye itself 
(That most pure spirit of sense) behold itself, 
Not going from itself; but eye to eye oppos'd 
Salutes each other with each other's form: 



428 PASSAGES FROM SUA KS PEA RE. 

For speculation turns not to itself, 

Till it hath fcravelTd, and is mirror'd there 

Where it may see itself: this is not strange at all. 

Uhjss. I do not strain at the position, — 
It is familiar, — but at the author's drift: 
Who, in his circumstance 
That no man is the lord of any thing, 
(Though in and of him there bo much consisting,) 
Till he communicate his parts to others: 
Nor doth he of himself know them for aught 
Till lie behold them form'd in the applause 
"Where they are extended; which, like an arch, rever- 

bera 
The voice again ; or like a gate of steel 
1 mting the sun, re.- 1 renders back 

] I i figure and his heat. I was much rapt in this, 
And apprehended here immediately 
Th ! unknown Ajax. 

Heavens, what a man is there ! a very horse; 
That has he knows not what. Nature, what things 

there are, 
Mosl abject in regard, and dear in use! 
What things again most dear in the esteem, 
And poor in worth ! Now shall we see to-morrow, 
An act that very chance doth throw upon him, 
Ajax renownd. heavens, what some men do, 
While some men leave to do ! 
How some men creep in skittish fortune's hall, 
Whiles others play the idiots in her eyes I 



PASSAGES FROM SHAKSPUAEU. 429 

How one man eats into another's pride, 
While pride is fasting in his wantonness! 
To see these Grecian lords ! — why, even already 
They clap the lubber Ajax on the shoulder, 
As if his foot were on brave Hector's breast, 
And great Troy shrieking. 

Achil. I do believe it : for they pass'd by me, 
As misers do by beggars, neither gave to me 
Good word, nor look : What, are my deeds forgot ? 

Ulyss. Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back, 
Wherein he puts alms for oblivion, 
A great-sized monster of ingratitudes : 
Those scraps are good deeds past, which are devour'd 
As fast as they are made, forgot as soon 
As done: Perseverance, dear my lord, 
Keeps honour bright : To have done, is to hang 
Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail 
In monumental mockery. Take the instant way ; 
For honour travels in a strait so narrow, 
Where one but goes abreast : keep, then, the path : 
For emulation hath a thousand sons, 
That one by one pursue : If you give way, 
Or hedge aside from the direct forthright, 
Like to an enter'd tide, they all rush by, 
And leave you hindmost; — 
Or, like a gallant horse fallen in first rank, 
Lie there for pavement to the abject rear, 
O'er-run and trampled on : Then what they do in pre- 
sent, 



430 PASSAGES FROM SHAKSPEARE. 

Though less than yours in past, must o'ertop yours : 

For time is like a fashionable host, 

That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand, 

And with his arms out-stretch'd, as he would fly, 

Grasps-in the comer : "Welcome ever smiles, 

And farewell goes out Bighing. O, let not virtue seek 

Remuneration for the tiling it v. 

For beauty, wit, 

Iligh birth, vigour of bone, desert in service, 

Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all 

To envious and calumniating ti. 

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin, — 

That all, with one consent, praise new-born gawds, 

Though they are made and moulded of things past ; 

And give to dust, that is a little gilt, 

More laud than gilt o'er-dustcd. 

The present eye praises the present object : 

Then marvel not, thou great and complete man, 

That all the Greeks begin to worship Ajax ; 

Since things in motion sooner catch the eye, 

Than what not stirs. The cry went once on thee, 

And still it might ; and yet it may again, 

If thou would'st not entomb thyself alive, 

And case thy reputation in thy tent; 

Whose glorious deeds, but in these fields of late, 

Made emulous missions 'mongst the gods themselves, 

And drave great Mars to faction. 

Achil. Of this my privacy 
I have strong reasons. 



PASSAGES FROM SHAKSPEARE. 431 

Ulyss. But 'gainst your privacy 
The reasons are more potent and heroical : 
"lis known, Achilles, that you are in love 
With one of Priam's daughters. 

Achil. Ha! known? 

Ulyss. Is that a wonder? 
The providence that's in a watchful state, 
Knows almost every grain of Plutus' gold ; 
Finds bottom in the uncomprehensive deeps ; 
Keeps place with thought, and almost, like the gods, 
Does thoughts unveil in their dumb cradles. 
There is a mystery (with whom relation 
Durst never meddle) in the soul of state ; 
Which hath an operation more divine, 
Than breath, or pen, can give expressure to: 
All the commerce that you have had with Troy, 
As perfectly is ours, as yours, my lord; 
But it must grieve young Pyrrhus now at home, 
TThen fame shall in our islands sound her trump ; 
And all the Grreekish girls shall tripping sing, — 
Great Hector's sister did Achilles win; 
But our great Ajax bravely heat down him. 
Farewell, my lord: I as your lover speak; 
The fool slides o'er the ice that you should break. 

[Exit. 

Pair. To this effect, Achilles, have I mov'd you : 
A woman impudent and mannish grown, 
Is not more loath'd than an effeminate man 
In time of action. I stand condemn'd for this ; 



432 PASSAGES FR M 8 II A K 8 P E ARE. 

They think, my little stomach to the war, 
And your great love to me, restrains you thus: 

t, rouse yourself; and the weak wanton, Cupia 
Shall from your neck unloose his amorous fold, 
And, like a dew-drop from the lion's mane, 
iook to air. 
Ai Shall Ajax fight with Hector? 

Patr. Ay; and. perha] Lve much honour by 

him. 
A ' <l I see my reputation is at stake; 
My fame is shrewdly gor'd. 

Patr. 0, then, beware ; 

Those wounds heal ill, that men do give themselves: 
Omission to do what is necessary, 
Seals a commission to a blank of danger; 
And danger, like an ague, subtly taints 
Even then when we sit idly in" the sun. 

Troilus and Cressida, Act. III., Scene 3. 



THE END. 



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